An explosion at a chemical plant and sixteen men lose their lives. Eight year old Michael will never see his father again. Inspired by true events, this is one man’s deeply moving journey into the past as he uncovers the truth about his father’s death and his mother’s life.

It’s Marlene Paine’s funeral, a day which has finally released her from thirty years of widowhood. Her son Michael, married and middle-aged, counts himself a happy man, but at the ceremony the unexpected appearance of a figure from the distant past brings ghosts to life, and rekindles a fire that had been smouldering for a generation.

A weekend in his childhood home finds Michael sorting through his memories as he packs up his mother’s life, but the more he packs her past away, the more his own unravels.

Told from both an adult and child’s eye view, it is a deeply moving account of how the death of a parent can alter the course of a child’s life. Whilst it is not an anti-corporate story, it shows how the fragmentation of corporations and outsourcing can lead to the loss of communication, common purpose and sense of responsibility with potentially devastating consequences.