Shocked beyond measure at her wrongful imprisonment, Phoebe Pardoe finds it hard to adjust to the harshness of life in the infamous Handsworth Prison. Abused and beaten, she struggles to maintain her unconquered spirit, little suspecting that her arrest is the work of her jealous Aunt Annie.

Phoebe has a guardian angel in the form of Sir William Dartmouth, who eventually engineers her release. But even so, cruelly disinherited, Phoebe must strive to make a living for herself in a man's world. Especially as Annie has not given up her perverse quest for revenge...

In the grand, gritty tradition of Jo Cox and Catherine Cookson, Meg Hutchinson tells the dramatic tale of a woman wronged who rises above adversity to grasp love and happiness at last.