In the early 1920s, Kate is happily married to Dr Rodney Prince who has taken into his home her illegitimate daughter Annie. Needless to say, although all seems to be well, a desperate conflict soon arises. Vicious rumours concerning Kate's past will not go away, and Annie is soon faced with a threat that conjures up images of the desperate poverty of the Fifteen Streets district that they have left behind them. Like all the best sequels, Cookson utilises elements of the original novel and gives them a fresh spin: Annie is presented with similar problems to those that faced her mother: religious prejudice (a recurrent theme in Cookson, and one that she clearly felt strongly about) and a harsh decision involving the choice between two very different ways of life: Brian Stannard, with his prospect of a settled middle-class life and the wayward but brilliant mathematician Terence McBane, who belongs to the world that Annie has left behind.

As always, the author is adroit at turning the screw ever tighter on her troubled heroine, and it's a cold-hearted reader who will not find themselves thoroughly involved in her plight. Cookson's 100th published book is set in the north-east that she chronicled so often and so well--and within the constraints of a romantic novel she is able to make many telling points about the inequalities and prejudices of human society. Her dialogue is as pithy as ever, such as Kate's distinction between herself and her daughter:

It may be the wrong religion for me...we're not all made alike, father: we are individuals. She is happy in her religion, I never was; she loves the pageantry and the feeling of one large family, I never did. From an early age I rebelled against it. I cannot distribute my love or affection. I've found it must be all one thing or person, or nothing. I must go direct to the source, so to speak, for I have found that intermediaries create a sense of the frustration in me, and the church is so full of intermediaries.