In the 1950s and '60s, a scheme was evolved to combine the solutions to two problems arising from the effects of World War II and concerning both many European governments and that of Australia. Europe had an embarrassing number of displaced, orphaned, and unwanted illegitimate children; Australia needed population. Fifty years later, a pile of clothes is found under the pier at Hockley, a quiet town on England's south coast, and a woman's body is subsequently found on the beach at Fairlight Cove, exactly where a suicide's body would wash ashore. But all is not quite as it should be.