Everything is charming in Rossmore. No longer a sleepy Irish town, where the young people leave to travel the world; nowadays it's a prosperous place, so busy that a new bypass has been proposed. The people of Rossmore are divided, particularly since the road will go right through the Whitethorn Woods and the well dedicated to St. Ann--a well thought by some to have near spiritual properties, and by others dismissed as a superstition. No one is more concerned that the honest and well-meaning curate Father Brian Flynn, who has no idea which faction to support.