Brought up on her parents' smallholding in Jarrow, Rose McConnell knows she is luckier than many in Tyneside during the harsh years of the 1870s. But she can't help dreaming of the world she has glimpsed in the idyllic country estate of Ravensworth where her own mother grew up. When she marries handsome William Fawcett, who lives in the well-to-do James Terrace, it seems her dream of a better life is finally within her reach. But with the poverty of Jarrow never far away it sometimes seems that the security of Rose's new life is as delicate as her childhood dreams...