On a wild, rainy night in December 1905 a tiny baby girl is left, wrapped in a plaid shawl, on the doorstep of Culler's Orphan Asylum in Rodney Street, Liverpool. They call her Lilac Larkin. She is soon 'adopted' by Nellie McDowell, the young maid-of-all-work at the orphanage, and the two girls are to become closer than sisters. The McDowell family - Aunt Ada and Nellie's brothers Charlie, Hal and Bertie - who live in Coronation Court, take Lilac in as one of their own. The McDowells are used to life in a city of terrible grinding poverty, where cold and hunger are commonplace, but Lilac finds she must learn the rules of street life along the Scottie Road quickly if she is to survive. Harder still, she is growing up in a country that is to lose a generation of men and boys to war. Even her beloved Nellie will leave the Pool to nurse the wounded in battle-scarred France. But Nellie must come back to Liverpool to find the only man who will ever really matter to her, and Lilac has a long way to go before she is to learn the secret of her birth and the true meaning of the word 'love'. Set against the grim backdrop of the First World War, moving from the slums and tenements of Li