Sydney, 1942 - the year of the fall of Singapore, the bombing of Darwin and the surprise attack on Sydney Harbour by Japanese midget submarines.
Through the eyes of a naive young priest we see into the hearts of a people who fear the end of life as they know it. In the confessional, Father Frank Darragh hears how his community is changing - how the fear of invasion by the Japanese is leading people to challenge what the church teaches is right or wrong.
When one of Darragh's "fallen" parishioners, the young working class wife of an Australian POW, is found brutally murdered, his obsession with her lost soul runs deeper than he will admit and leads Darragh on a dangerous journey of personal discovery, one that puts his own life at risk . . .