The wedding of Llinos Savage, the young saviour of the Savage Pottery, and the fascinating Joe Mainwaring , sets the small sea front town of Swansea ablaze with gossip. Joe , born of an unlikely alliance between a native American squaw and a wealthy British businessman, is always perceived by the Swansea elite as a foreigner and an outsider. When Llinos's father dies after a long illness, she is devastated, but her grief turns to fear when Joe is accused of his father-in-law's murder by the local doctor and is incarcerated inside the walls of the castle along with thieves and debtors. There among the filth and dirt, Joe makes friends with an old Jewish man, and this brief friendship, formed in the most ill-fated circumstances, proves to be the catalyst to a series of events which unexpectedly threaten to destroy the marriage and the very lives of Joe and Llinos.

Iris Gower has created a wonderful background of the romantic china clay industry of South Wales for her new and dramatic novel sequence.