In a small Irish village in 1957, Tara Maguire, a young resolute woman, is the talk of the town because she is having a baby out of wedlock, and refuses to name the father. During Sunday mass she goes into labour giving birth to a baby boy. Sergeant Brendan Hegarty, the local police officer of the Garda Síochána, and Mick, a local landowner, vie for Tara's hand in marriage, but she refuses them both.