A tale of family and ties that bind.

Every day a girl in Bess’s class gets beaten for using Welsh, for using her own tongue.

Life in 1860's Carmarthen is precarious, riven by divides of language, politics and religion. Bess Morgan’s choices are limited, even though she was tutored with Magistrate Davies’ daughter. When her newborn baby brother dies Bess wonders why women ever marry. Her views are confirmed after her mother is carted away to the newly built asylum..

Will meeting her brother’s friend, ex-coal miner Abel change her mind?

Handsome Richard Morgan hates the flattery and fawning required of a draper's apprentice. He longs to study then teach. Besotted by Magistrate Davies’ flirtatious daughter, he must find a way to marry a girl way above his station.

Can Bess and Richard escape the class constraints of Victorian Wales, after tragedy and disappointment? Coal is king and the valleys boom, as Carmarthen stagnates.

A stand-alone sequel, set 20 years after Book 1, From Waterloo to Water Street, this novel explores the sometimes sad realities of life in Wales and London in the 1860's and 70's. Meticulously researched, it is based on the real lives of the next generation of S E Morgan's ancestors.