Twenty-two years ago Emma Grady was wrongfully convicted & sentenced to transportation to Australia where she bore & lost her baby daughter
- conceived during a passionate affair with Marlow Tanner. It is now 1885 & Emma has returned to Blackburn. Reunited with Marlow she has a loving family yet she is still haunted by the past unable to forget how her uncle Caleb Crowther ignored her desperate plea to save herself & her tragic first-born. Crowther curses his niece's return & also hounds Molly Emma's estranged daughter. Molly & her children run away & contending with hunger exhaustion & the unwelcome attentions of the men who are drawn to Molly's dark beauty their life at times is almost unbearable. But Molly has inherited Emma's indomitable spirit...