This story begins where "The Crescent" ends. It follows the life of jute mill weaver Mary-Anne Garland from her prison term back to Dundee in the hard times of the general strike and into the second World War years in the city. The brutality of the treatment meted out by the "screws" who made her existence a misery inside was the beginning of her decline for the second time in her life. Dundee was a hard place to exist on the pittance wages in the wake of the first world war and it was even harder for the strikers who walked out in support of the miners. Emigration to South Africa was a choice George and Catherine McKee made in the belief that Scotland had nothing left to offer them. What he did not know was that they were walking into the end of a disaster and another bloodbath in a far away land. The people of Dundee who were used to poverty and hardship, were facing another war with Germany and in many ways, a second world war was preferable to life on the broo. As war descends on Europe and rages on, life in Dundee changes dramatically to cope with the dangers of being bombed and invaded by a ruthless enemy. For many Dundee men though, they were turned into fighting soldiers who were asked to sacrifice their lives at St. Valery in the aftermath of the disaster of Dunkirk. Their wives and bairns knew nothing of their struggle as the POW's were forced to march through France unless escape was an option.