In the late 1980s, David Dowling takes a job with Brown Box Freight Company, a successful Irish business headed by a man with a volatile temper. Everyone fears Mike Brown (or Mick, as they prefer to call him), but they also go above and beyond for him. They refer to it as Bleeding Brown, which Dowling has a strong aversion to. Then there is the alluring and enigmatic Helena. David's friend, Rod, tells him she is Mick's mistress. Yet, even as it appears as though hers is the ideal life, she seems constrained and unhappy. At a training conference organized by Mick, get to know each other, and he learns the roots of her and Mick's relationship, and how it has unraveled. Bleeding Brown is both a coming-of-age story, and a tale of fresh beginnings. It explores the lives of two young people with different perspectives and backgrounds, and how an unlikely friendship between them sets them to take paths neither would have considered.