As a child Alice had paid the nuns half a crown to adopt a black baby from the mission in Africa - a baby that never appeared. Now a loveless spinster of sixty-seven, still yearning for a daughter, Alice''s life is one of dull predictability, unbroken by the ritual visit from her middle-aged relatives.

Then one evening Dinah storms into her home. Bawdy, busty and black, enigmatic friend to the wayward and eccentric, Dinah is about to take on Dublin and transform Alice''s life - creating a world of unlimited love and miraculous possibilities...