Mary Walton was the apple of her da's eye. For long now he had been out of work, and Mary was his only comfort during those dark years of the Depression, when unemployment and a nagging, ambitious wife gnawed away at his self-respect. Once he was a man who had held his head high with Geordie pride; now his only hope was that Mary would escape from the grinding poverty of the Tyneside slums that had held him a prisoner for so many years.

But then something happened to Mary that shattered all his dreams of her future-an event that was to split a family and influence its members for generations to follow...