Patsy grows up with a loving father but a suicidal mother. After her mother`s death, she is sent to live with her grandfather and then, during World War II, to an aunt`s place in the country. When she becomes pregnant, her angry aunt packs her off to London again, where Patsy discovers she has the gift of clairvoyance--and where she is also brutalized, taken advantage of, and occasionally taken care of by a variety of characters, culminating in a long stay in a mental hospital. By the time she is an old woman, Patsy--now called Winnie--has nothing to call her own but a box of junk that represents the events of her life. And then even that is stolen....