Born on a farm outside Edinburgh in the mid-nineteenth century, Agnes Watt is embraced by family, community, and tradition. Her youthful hopes and dreams are quashed but she falls in love and marries William Miller, a Gordon Highlander. Life spirals into dark places as the couple becomes ensnared in the nightmare that descended on the Scottish working-class during the industrial revolution.

The triumphs of the great Victorian era came at an appalling human cost and Agnes fights against disease and grinding poverty. She tries to keep her family safe as tragedy stalks them in an age known in Glasgow as "the slaughter of the innocents." The friendship of other women and her unshakable belief in education strengthens her resolve. Will she endure to rise above the cruelest blow of all?