Family of Women is the story of three generations of women. Bessie is scarred by a childhood of poverty in the slums of Victorian Birmingham and was left a young widow with four children. She is a hard, bullying woman who will go to disturbing lengths to keep her family under her thumb. Violet, one of Bessies four children, marries young into the arms of a man whose life will be broken by war. Linda, intelligent and energetic, craves education and something more than the life she sees around her. Torn from her longed for place at the grammar school, she gives up hoping for anything better. It takes a tragic love affair to make her question the limitations of her life and the secrets which haunt her family.