Martha Witherington was born in Dublin in 1775. She eloped with future revolutionary Theobald Wolfe-Tone (who re-named her Matilda) at 16, lost him to a British prison at 23, spent 20 years fending for herself & their one remaining son in post-revolutionary Paris & ended her days at the head of a 3-generation household in Washington DC, outliving two husbands & three children. She was, to judge from her correspondance, a pragmatic revolutionary.

The restoration of her tombstone in 1998 provoked an excavation of her own long-buried story. First-hand accounts (from Matilda's pen & those of her contemporaries) combine with a sound-track of political songs from the 1700s to create a portrait of the hitherto invisible Mrs. Tone. The film ends with the official unveiling of her tombstone by then Irish president Mary Robinson, followed by a lively wake held in her honour in Mona's Bar in New York's Lower East Side.