Beth Hubble has grown up in extreme poverty in Dock Cottages - a filthy slum teeming with scruffy, malnourished children. And, although she loves training to become a nurse, problems at home are never far from her mind. Doctors have told her mother that, after fourteen pregnancies, she is too frail to survive another, but they have refused to help her avoid becoming pregnant again. Beth is determined to help, but, in 1920, birth control is a taboo subject, and her quest for knowledge is thwarted at every turn. Meanwhile Beth has fallen for Andrew Langford, a hospital lab technician, who she hopes will take her away from the tenements for good. But will he want to marry a girl from Dock Cottages? And will Beth ever find the love and happiness that she deserves?