When violence, rape, and tragedy shatter Marjorie's life, the young woman finds herself pregnant and alone. After giving up her baby for adoption, she marries to escape her northern England hometown, leaving behind a devoted, heartbroken admirer.

Twenty-eight years later, Marjorie's child, Helen, is a reporter for a city paper investigating corruption, a story that leads her to Marjorie's old home. The change of scenery is a welcome relief, coming as it does on the heels of a disastrous relationship with a member of the aristocracy.

Without her realizing it, Helen's assignment brings her into contact with her birth mother's friends and family, including her uncle. An artist, Nicholas is fighting to preserve the town's historic wharf buildings-buildings slated for demolition by the local council who are in the pocket of Max Baines, a property developer.

As Helen digs deeper, she discovers Baines's involvement in blackmail, drugs, and prostitution. She also discovers a family-and mother-she long thought lost to time.

A romance reminiscent of Catherine Cookson's sweeping stories, Marjorie brings the world of northern England in the 1960s to life-a world with attitudes vastly different from the flower power that swept America.