Frannie Harrison, the youngest child of a wealthy, but alcoholic and dysfunctional family, sets out to find her own life in the turbulent 1960s where anything goes. After a while, she finds herself in Yorkville, Toronto's hippie community, filled with drop-outs and losers, druggies and American draft-dodgers. Young and innocent, she falls in love with an ambitious American who works at Wodbine racetrack and convinces Frannie to take a job there. Suspecting that he is into drug dealing in a small way, she was by no means prepared to witness his violent murder days before they were to be married. Even in her grief, Frannie knows that she must get away, eventually re-uniting with old friends in England in the hope of starting a new life. Six years later, the murderer is found and Frannie is recalled to Toronto as a major witness in the trial where she struggles to accept the truth she had long denied.