This story is set in the slums of Glasgow in the 1970s and 1980s. It exposes the early lives of Mary and her brother John, born to lower-class Irish immigrant parents; their struggles through a childhood of neglect and abuse and the constant fear of their violent father and schizophrenic mother.
Mary escapes at the age of sixteen and returns a year later to find her fourteen year old brother living on the street. She takes him into her care and...