A powerful saga of the Northeast that sweeps through Edwardian England and into the turbulent days of the First World War. In times of poverty, times of struggle and times of war, the people of Tyneside are portrayed at their most courageous. Emmie Kelso was rescued as a child from a dingy Gateshead tenement and sent to live with the MacRaes, a generous mining family. Now an intelligent and spirited young woman, she volunteers at the notorious Gateshead Settlement - a place where the middle class live and work among the poorest. She is swept off her feet by handsome Tom Curran, a miner, but soon learns that he is brutal and violent. When war breaks out, Tom enlists and to Emmie's surprise she falls in love with the MacRae's eldest son Rab, a conscientious objector. But dark times are ahead: Rab faces execution for his political beliefs. And the end of the war brings Tom home...