Mairead Kelly, only seventeen, barefoot, starving and alone, flees the unimaginable horror of the Irish Famine, only to find disease and desperate squalor in nineteenth century industrial Liverpool.
Against all odds, and amid a multitude of setbacks, she rises above the poverty and death, marries, and achieves a brief troubled happiness. But what is the dark tragic secret she is harbouring?
Mairead's struggle to access education for her children backfires when her literate daughter embarks on a romance with the charming son of a despised, rich, English family. Are the English so uncaring after all?
As the tensions rise and the two families clash will Mairead's tragic secret finally be revealed?