Marie Masters has been happily married for nine years, but she can’t help but feel her once-loving husband Ivor is no longer the man she married. He’s increasingly prone to drink and gambling and has become strangely secretive. Worried that Ivor’s behaviour is putting their growing family at risk, Marie decides to follow her husband. Marie learns that Ivor is spending time at a run-down house called Badgers Brook, but that’s only the beginning of it.

A small Welsh town hosts a lively and varied community - and none more so than Nelly Luke, the cheerful Cockney widow who made a ramshackle cottage her cosy, if unconventional, home. Nelly's generosity and wisdom win her many friends: Fay, the young newly-wed; Amy, the glamorous shopkeeper whose private life is colourful indeed; and her dignified sister Prue, whose family cupboard contains more than a few skeletons. Against the mounting excitement of the Coronation summer, Nelly steers her friends and family through storms and sunshine alike.

In the heart of Dressmakers' Alley, Madame Pauline’s sweatshop is rumoured to be a particularly unpleasant place to work. Filled with seamstresses paid a pittance who turn a blind eye to what darker activities are hidden behind locked doors. Young Winnie Brown is keen to prove her value to the Women Movement and secures a job as a seamstress to investigate the whispers of some unsavoury goings on. Her concerns are soon justified when she hears a desperate cry for help.

As war looms in Europe, 18-year-old Jane Shaw runs the household as an unpaid servant on a meagre budget. When tragedy strikes and she loses her beloved younger brother in suspicious circumstances, Jane takes a position in service looking after Ned, a troubled young boy. Here she meets dashing David Heron, Ned's Uncle and they form an immediate attachment until she is dismissed after being accused of stealing a piece of jewellery. Returning home, Jane and her sister, Melia, are soon orphaned and left at the mercy of their Aunt Alice.

When Molly Holden’s husband, Thomas, is convicted of being a Luddite on the word of a secret informer, he is sentenced to be transported to Australia. Left with their baby daughter, Molly must find work to survive. But the man who informed on Thomas is a former suitor of Molly’s, and Isaac believes that with Thomas out of the way she will return to him....