Adapted from the first two parts of the author's novel The Mill Girl, Sarah Harvey is born into a loving but poor family. At the age of fourteen, she starts work at one of the many woollen mills in the small Yorkshire town where she lives. She becomes a knowledgeable employee and, at the age of twenty-two, marries and produces a son who will become her rock after her husband dies when Paul is only four. He develops a friendship with Mark Crowther...