In a mountain village in Morocco, an Englishwoman transforms the lives of her visiting niece, a blind baby girl, and an eleven-year-old boy through her work as a missionary nurse.

Raised by her grandparents, 12-year-old Lucy starts a search for her father that takes her from a prison in England to the Mediterranean coast of Spain.

When she is sent from her London home to live in the Welsh countryside with the large, boisterous Owen family, eleven-year-old Elaine feels miserable and resentful until she discovers an abandoned garden and determines to make it her secret sanctuary.