Twopence to Cross the Mersey tells of the Forresters' struggle to cope when, in 1930, Helen's father goes bankrupt and the family of nine falls from middle-class affluence into sudden and total penury. Theirs was a world in which if they only had enough money for either coal or food, they chose coal; starving was better than freezing. In Liverpool Miss the family slowly begin to win their fight for survival. But fourteen-year-old Helen's personal battle is still more difficult - to persuade her parents to allow her to earn her own living and lead her own life. Illness caused by severe malnutrition, dirt (she has her first bath in four years), and above all the selfish demands of her parents - these are the challenges she is forced to meet. In By the Waters of Liverpool Helen finally wins the right to go out to work. War breaks out, the younger children are evacuated, more money comes into the house and Helen begins to discover that there is more to life than the everlasting drudgery of bare survival. Lime Street at Two, the final book in the series, recalls the war years and new troubles: Helen's mother stealing from her, her father wasting the family income on drink, and, as a thunderous and terrifying background, the devastation of the Liverpool blitz.