For twenty years Anna has subdued herself as a priest's wife and finds herself, at forty two, in a rural parish where the screws are tighter than ever In defiance of universal horror and disapproval, she takes a job in a supermarket to raise her daughter's school fees and starts on the painful path to becoming her true self She is watched by her family, by the Parish and by three men who are intoxicated by Anna's appetite for life and drawn deeply into the struggle