Blighted by unemployment, County Durham's New Morven in the 1930s is for most a place to flee from. But eccentric Jenefer Loumis and her war-scarred husband are there by choice and when Fionnoula Montague meets them, she feels more alive than she has ever done. Jenefer Loumis seems to understand the young girl in a way her own tyrannical mother has never done. For it is Jenefer who knows what Finn is experiencing when she meets unemployed miner Michael O'Toole. But after Finn is attacked, and Michael imprisoned, even Jenefer cannot stop Finn's decline. But then Jenefer has a plan that for a short time is to transport Finn to a world Jenefer herself once inhabited, a world of gloss and glitter that returns Finn to New Morven a very different young woman...