Angel Meadow

The Brody girls have always been a bit different from the rest of the folk in Angel Meadow, the appalling slum where their drunken mother Kitty is the lowest sort of prostitute. Then one day Kitty disappears from their lives forever - and this new crisis turns out to be a new beginning.

For Nancy Brody, only nine years old, makes up her mind that she will not see little Mary and Rose in the workhouse. Determined to find a better way to live, she gets work for them all at the Monarch Cotton Manufacturing Mill - and then sets out to better herself and her sisters. Saving every penny, working every waking hour, pushing her less-ambitious sisters to the limits of their patience and loyalty, Nancy succeeds. She becomes an employer herself, buying the cloth for her own factory from the Monarch Mill where she was once a labourer.

But happiness seems as elusive for Nancy as it was when she was a mistreated child. Though he once said he loved her, Mick O'Rourke has become Nancy's worst enemy, and seems determined to take a terrible revenge on her and her sisters. And Josh Hayes, the man who truly loves Nancy, seems to be destined to be parted from her . . .