The setting is New Ross, Wexford, in the run up to Christmas, where coal merchant Bill Furlong is working hard to keep his clients supplied before for a hard winter sets in; a quiet, introspective man, he has a tender relationship with his wife Eileen. Early one morning while making a deliver to the local convent, presided over by the imperious Sister Mary, the Mother Superior, he makes a discovery that forces him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a town controlled by the Catholic Church.