Nan's mother loves to tell her daughter stories, though the details vary according to how much she has drunk. The tale she tells most often claims that Admiral Lord Nelson is Nan's father: he was her lover and she saw him die at Trafalgar. Or so she claims.

From poor beginnings, resourceful Nan makes her own determined way through life, but always haunted by the wish to know the truth about her father.

From Portsmouth in the early 1800s to the battlefields of the Crimea, Nan discovers the world is full of people with a story about Nelson. There are some questions we can never hope to answer...