Stepping Stones

One April night in 1931 in Bootle, Liverpool little Lizzie O'Brien is born. She is her mother's first daughter - a tiny cuckoo in a nest of strapping blond boys. But her happiness is overshadowed by her father Tom, a drunk, and her mother Kitty, who in order to feed her starving children she sells her body on the Liverpool docks. At 13, her daughter Lizzie is pregnant by her father, and still weak after her abortion, kills him. Her mother takes the blame, but Lizzie cannot blot out the painful memories of her childhood. Eventually, with a failed marriage behind her, she finds fame, fortune, and friendship in Hollywood—but happiness still escapes her, even in marriage. And so she returns to her roots, and it is her final marriage and its disastrous consequences that, at last, force her to face her past and find the happiness and peace of mind that have always eluded her.