A stark, emotive saga about love and loss in the North of England at the turn of the 20th century. On her father's death, Kate Ferrar is expected to move from London to a mining village in County Durham, to live with an uncle she barely knows. Restricted by the confines of polite society and hungry for education and honest company, she breaks all social rules by taking a job in her uncle's office. There she meets Jon Armstrong, a pit lad, tough, enigmatic and not at all the sort of man Kate should be consorting with. He's also engaged to a local girl Lizzie, while Kate's uncle is plotting a suitable marriage for her. But a sudden and shocking mining disaster almost destroys everything. Both Kate and Lizzie must draw on all their courage to survive, but their delicate position in the village threatens to collapse as disastrously as the mine on which their lives depend.