This captivating first novel by the author who has been called Scotland's answer to Catherine Cookson tells a story of love and ambition set in Lanarkshire in the 19th century.

The Lanarkshire colliery village of Blacklaw is a harsh and unforgiving place, but it is home to the ambitious, hard-working Stalker family. Until one morning in March 1875, when a mining disaster takes a hundred lives and changes their life forever...

The underground explosion kills their menfolk, but not their ambitions, their pride or their love for one another. Drew Stalker is the young man on whom their hopes rest. But it is on his sisters Kate and Mirren that the burden of saving their family will fall.

A bestseller since it was first published, the compelling story of the Stalker family continues in The Hiring Fair and concludes in The Dark Pasture.