Born on a farm outside Edinburgh, in the nineteenth century, Agnes is embraced by family, community and tradition. Her youthful hopes and dreams are quashed but she falls in love and marries a Gordon Highlander. Life spirals into dark places as the couple become ensnared in the nightmare that descended on the Scottish working-class during the industrial revolution. The triumphs of the great Victorian era came at an appalling human cost and Agnes fights against disease and soul-destroying poverty. She tries to keep her family safe as tragedy stalks them in an age known in Glasgow as The Slaughter of the Innocents.

The friendship of other women and her faith in education give her strength, despite widowhood and the prospect of the poorhouse. When Agnes discovers the mystery of the disappearance of her daughter’s best friend, she finds young women with consumption, banished from their slum homes to protect breadwinners from infection. She decides she must help these young women whose fate is prostitution or starvation – but how?

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