Edwardian Liverpool - the greatest port in the Empire, a sprawling, brawling city of poverty and wealth, slum tenements and civic pride, vice and hard-won respectability.

Mara O'Shaughnessy, eighth of thirteen children, longs to escape from the crowded tumult of her family. Her sister Caitlin, quiet but determined, is already, to her mother's horror, involved with the suffragettes.

Woodall Park, two-thousand-acre home of Elizabeth Woodall and her parents, could be a million miles away. With their neighbours, the Osbornes of Beechwood Hall, they live their lives of servanted ease, country pursuits and suitable marriages.

Yet, in the golden years before World War I, Liverpool Irish and English gentry are to become fatefully, passionately entangled.

'Her thousands of fans recognise the artistry of a true storyteller' Lancashire Life