Set against a background of the Lancashire/Cheshire cotton industry, The Runaway is a magnificent saga of a young man's rise to power, his passion and poverty, feuds and triumphs and the two very different women who shape his life.

Caroline Shrigley runs the Temperance Hotel alone, bringing up her younger sister Jane after the tragic death of their parents. The only man she ever loved was killed in the Great War, and Carrie is beginning to think her life will be nothing but work, chapel, and giving Jane all the advantages she never had.

Then Patrick Kennedy, a wild, handsome and passionate Irishman, turns her world upside down, and the life she's dreamed of is finally within Carrie's reach - until a devastating betrayal threatens to take it all away. Can there ever be happiness for a mill town girl...?

Can Alice protect her siblings?Eldest child Alice Davenport has always helped to look after her younger brothers and sister when her Mama was unwell.