Will he ever find what he's looking for? Oliver Wainwright is still a boy when he first sets eyes on the fair delicate Florence
- the aristocratic granddaughter of Sir Philip Oldfield & determined never to be a servant or follow in his father's footsteps as a quarry worker on the Oldfield estate he runs away to Middlefield that very day Slowly but surely he sets about becoming a man of property & a cotton industry king He works single-mindedly to achieve his ambition
- until he meets Rosie a married mill hand who distracts him with her dark warm beauty Has Oliver finally found what he really wanted all alongset against a background of the Lancashire Cheshire cotton industry The Runaway is a magnificent saga of a young man's rise to power his passion & poverty feuds & triumphs & the two very different women who shape his life