It's 1931 and the Depression has brought Tyneside to its knees. Young, pretty Clara Magee is devastated when her father commits suicide leaving secrets behind him and the family is forced to sell their fancy-goods shop to a German couple. Despite her mother Patience's disapproval, Clara befriends their daughter Rennie and hot-headed son Benny, but her heart lies with their dashing elder brother Frank. Patience thinks businessman Vinnie Craven, who runs the local boxing hall, a far better catch for Clara. When Frank leaves abruptly for Germany, Vinnie single-mindedly pursues the vivacious...

Emmie Kelso is only nine years old when she is rescued from a dingy Gateshead tenement and sent to Crawdene for her health; taken in to the vibrant, loving household of the MacRaes, a radical mining family. Blossoming into a pretty, spirited young woman, Emmie is swept off her feet by handsome miner Tom Curran, but learns too late of his possessive, violent nature. As war engulfs Europe in 1914, Tom enlists but Emmie joins the MacRaes and others in their cries for peace. Working alongside Rab, the MacRaes eldest son, their childhood devotion to each other sparks into a love too strong to...