In Branagan, Kentucky , in 1941, the wild and beautiful Ethel is courted by three friends, all young airmen. On of them, Larry, is the love of her life, and their time together is full of romance and passion.  He goes off to War, wearing her ring, and with her promise of eternal love.

Two years later, when an American B-17 bomber crashes in Belfast , a young Irish boy named Quinlan is a witness to the tragedy. He can never bring himself to act on the secret that he learns that night.

The crash kills Larry, and Ethel never comes to terms with his loss.   She seals up all her memento's of that time, and never speaks of it.  She marries one of Larry's friends, and they have a daughter, Marie. The third friend, Jack, holds back his feelings – he too has made a promise to the slain Larry, and for his own secret reasons, feels guilt for Larry's death.

Fifty years pass.   In 1991 a teenager in Belfast caught up in that city's civil war, meets Quinlan, now an old man. They investigate the site of the B-17 crash. The teenager finds a ring, inscribed with the name of “Ethel”. Forced to escape from the IRA, he decides to go to America and track her down.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky, Ethel has grown old, and her daughter Marie understands nothing of the memory and loss that has shaped her mother's life. Ethel's husband dies, leaving Jack as the last of the three friends still alive, and still in love with her.   Ethel is now a widow and the sudden arrival of Larry's ring from another time and another continent makes her buttoned-up life come apart. Marie discovers who her mother really is, and Jack makes one last attempt to heal the pain of a lifetime. The secrets of the past can no longer be buried, and Ethel has to travel to Ireland , either to end her life, or begin it again.