Wilf Cotton is an aspiring writer from a mining village in South Yorkshire. To develop his talents and free himself from the affectionate tentacles of family life, he goes to live in a nearby city. At Mrs. Swallow's he meets Marguerite Fisher, a girl with a more complex and unhappy background than his own, making a brave new beginning in the city where she lived as a child.

In the story of who they are and what they become, Stan Barstow has drawn a picture of a search for identity that is all too recognizable even today.