The year is 1862, and Meg Tyson is a screen lass – women tasked with separating the coal mined from the pits out of wastes such as metal and stone. She lives in Morthwaite, a small village in Cumbria, in the northwest of England.

The tiny village is home to Coater Pit, a coal mine, and here, most of the men are colliers and many of the women and girls are screen lasses. That is the destiny Meg has accepted for herself. But one terrifying moment sets Meg on a different path, to a life a world away from Morthwaite.

Little does Meg know that an encounter with the youngest son of the Bensons – Coater pit owners and, essentially, owners of the village – would set her off on a journey that would lead her to Vancouver Island in Canada, where she would get to make a life for herself that she could never have imagined.