The MacLean family has more than their fair share of secrets. They live in a close-knit community on Glasgow's High Street. There's Iris, the family beauty with a taste for married men, Big Bea with her volcanic temper and Uncle Jakey who is more than a little strange. And Ruby is seventeen, pregnant and hurriedly married off. As WWII breaks out, Ruby's drunked husband heads off to war. Ruby must somehow find the strength to escape her doomed marriage and build a new life for herself and her daughter.