In the impoverished area of Nechells in Birmingham in the 1930s, young Emma Brown's life is turned upside down when her mother has another baby and goes to stay with her tyrannical older sister Life gets harder for Em Her best friend ostracizes her, and when the Board Man comes to call, wanting to know why she's not at school, things are really bad When her father stays out later and later in the evenings, always the worse for wear, and spending too much time with a local very merry widow, Em decides to travel across Birmingham to fetch her mother home, but the mother she discovers is very different from the mother she remembers