In rural
Michigan in 1991, Marie Harris delivers the eulogy at the funeral of her father Chuck, a
U.S. Army Air Force veteran who had fought in
World War II. The church is full of veterans who knew and loved him. Her mother Ethel Ann is sitting out on the church porch, smoking and nursing a hangover. Ethel is indifferent to Chuck's death, which only her friend Jack Etty seems to understand. Marie is furious with her mother and with her implication that she slept with many of the veterans when they were all young, but then Ethel relents and says that she was always faithful. It emerges that there is a lot Marie does not know about her mother's past and the true story of her love life. A young Ethel was in love with young farmer Teddy Gordon, who builds a house with his best friends Jack and Chuck. Her parents think she is dating "good old reliable" Chuck (all three are in love with her), but within days of the
Pearl Harbor attack, she has accepted Teddy's gold ring and unofficially married him – with Jack and Chuck as witnesses. The three young men fly out the next day. Teddy and Jack are stationed at
RAF Langford Lodge near
Belfast, where Jack plans to eventually propose to Eleanor, an Irish
tart. In 1991 in Belfast Jimmy Riley, Eleanor's young adult grandson, encounters local elder Michael Quinlan, who is digging for wreckage of a crashed
B-17 aircraft on nearby
Black Mountain. Jimmy finds a ring at the site and determines to return it to the woman from the "Ethel & Teddy" inscription. The
United States Department of Veterans Affairs identify an Ethel to whom crash victim Teddy Gordon left his belongings. Jimmy flees
The Troubles for Michigan to give Ethel the ring. She reveals a wall covered in souvenirs of Teddy, which Jack and Chuck boarded up for her shortly after his death in June 1944. Marie is shocked and furious to learn that her mother still mourns for him, finally understanding why Ethel shut out Marie and Chuck. Jack later tells her the full story, including his own three failed marriages, Ethel's refusal to leave the house Teddy built for her, and her taking ten years to marry Chuck. Jack's son, Pete, realizes Jack always loved Ethel. Ethel travels to Belfast with Jimmy. As she holds the hand of a dying British soldier after an
IRA car-bomb attack, Quinlan tells Ethel that he, as a teenager, was on Black Mountain when Teddy died. Teddy had him promise to give Ethel the ring, and tell her she must be free to make her own choice in love. Quinlan tearfully says he should have reached out to her back then, and that he had spent 50 years looking for the ring that was lost in the final blast that killed Teddy, now regretfully thinking she needed it as much as she needed his dying words. Joining Ethel in Belfast, Jack confesses that he has always loved her. She is finally able to cry and properly grieve for Teddy. She and Jack embrace. ==Main cast==