The course of family saga historical love stories is not a smooth one for Annie Pepper, a young woman facing the burdens of poverty and unrequited love in historical Ulster. When Billy Dawson turns up on her mother's flax farm to help with the harvest, Annie is captivated by him, and believes the promises he makes to her when he says he will marry her. But her sister, Mary, has also fallen for him, and the jealousy between these two women in love threatens to shatter the family ties that are all that hold the farm together. When the worst happens and Annie's mother runs out of money, family drama splits the sisters and drives Annie and her mother into the Poorhouse, where she must toil for long hours to earn her keep, even as her mother withers away into nothing. Kept hoping only by the women friendships she has formed with the other inmates of the Poorhouse, her spirit soars when she receives a letter from her sister asking Annie to come and live with her - but Mary is in Dundee, married to the man she loves, who she thought loved her. It turns out her life was not one of the great family saga historical love stories after all. But where else can she go? Hoping to escape her dead-end life in Ulster, Annie accepts her sister's invitation and follows her to Dundee, where she discovers both sadness and joy, heartbreak and hope, and finds that despite the literature of historical fiction women can find happiness even in the most desolate of places. In this historical fiction women friendships are tested by family drama and bound by love, tracing the struggles of working class women in love in the late nineteenth century.
