Salford, England in 1926 is a musty, damp, coal-stained remnant of the industrial revolution. Clarrie's parents, William and Sally Hancock, along with most of their neighbors, are engaged in a desperate struggle to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. Hope of a better life is seen as an exercise in futility as the class structure appears set as stone.As she grows, Clarrie finds escape in reading. She identifies with the heroines of her library books and sees no reason to accept the lower-class category to which she was assigned. At school it is drummed into her that she must "learn to dwell content in that state to which it has pleased God to call her." When she is thirteen, the Nazi blitz brings a premature end to her childhood, plunging her into the realities of work, loss, and love played out against the upheaval of war. In the end, Clarrie finds what she needs in ways she never expected