As Opal, her sister Cassie and her mother all take on jobs to afford the rent now the man of the house is disgraced in prison, Opal suffers the eye of hopeful young Fred, Patty an awful girl and hates not seeing her best friend Olivia as she's forced to work at Fairy Glen Sweet Factory.
Her sister grows close to a man she met while working whom has been painting herher. As Opal progresses in her job at the sweet factory, she grows close to the owner, going to suffrage meetings and to tea with her too where she eventually meets her son, Morgan after he returns from Oxford.
Her mother grows more sour and hateful of her life now after failing to work any normal workhouse jobs. She also grows more despairing over her 'lying' daughters as she struggles to believe they have fallen for decent men after her own husbands betrayal.
As the story progresses, Opal and Morgan become fond of each other but the war comes between them both as he has to go and fight. Cassie and Daniel are a well matched couple as Cassie leaves home to be threatened never to come back by their mother. While Opal's father becomes a shadow of the former gentleman he was once before the year the novel is set over happened.
It is a taxing time war and this family goes through hell before that even gets declared. From the start I found the book hard to get into as times now are obviously very different to times then.
However, as the story unravelled and developed, I grew find of Opal and her kind character even if her family and friends didn't all stay loving and caring towards her as they were very bitter and judgemental, her story is portrayed as a tragic one eventually and for poor Opal it was sadly how things often went back then with war meaning losing loved ones and than prison changes people. It was a very honest realistic retelling of the first world war and time leading up to and into it for hard pressured families I feel.
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