Scottish journalist Meg Henderson grew up in Glasgow during the fifties and sixties as part of a large, often troubled, family. The tenement block in which they lived collapsed and they were moved to the notorious Blackhill district, where religious sectarianism was rife, gang warfare and struggles with hostile bureaurcrats were part of the daily life for the people. Meg was born into a mixed-religion family, where there was warmth and laughter as well as conflict. She had a close relationship with her mother, Nan, and her mother's sister, Meg's Aunt Peggy, two idealistic emotional women who took on the troubles of the world. Together they shaped Meg's life, shielded her from the effects of her father's heavy drinking and helped her to move on, eventually, from the slums of Glasgow. A hopeless romantic, Peggy searched for a husband until late in her life and then endured a harsh, unhappy marriage until she died tragically in childbirth. Her death devastated the family and destroyed Meg's childhood, but it was only as an adult, after the death of her own mother, that Meg was able to discover the shocking facts behind Peggy's untimely demise.