If not for her widowed mother fetching her out of school to work, Violet's intelligence and looks might have given her a very different future than one encompassing the loss of her older brother in the Great War, attempted rape, early marriage and widowhood leaving her to support two young children. Determined to give her children the chances she never had, Violet takes on shop-work but her family can't fight free of hard times. Violet has to face her former would-be rapist, a murder too close to home and the struggles of her daughter, Annie, to make a better life for herself. A family saga covering three generations of the Smith/Higgins family and their fight against poverty through two world wars and beyond.