The abiding truth about love is that it can and it does endure. It's World War II. A Canadian-born Japanese girl meets an Irish-bred Canadian boy, and they discover love in Vancouver, British Columbia. Separated by race, religion and war, their love is torn apart by the jingoistic fever of war that destroys the girl's home and challenges the boy's deep-seated commitment to the Roman Catholic Church. It is a story that sweeps a panoramic picture from the bitter streets of Belfast in Northern Ireland to feudal Japan; a tale of a seminarian's life and the life of a woman who learns to survive in a hostile land. Yet love, tested and challenged, never dies.