A tragic loss, a new path?

When her family is struck by a terrible tragedy, Sarah Nightingale is forced to go into service at Grey Friars House as an under nursery-maid. Although the situation wasn’t of her making Sarah thrives there, but life for her younger brother Alfie is not as easy.

Desperate to avoid being sent to the workhouse, Alfie runs away to London to seek his fortune. But young and inexperienced with the dangerous streets of London, Alfie is tricked and sold to work as a slave on a coal barge.

Sarah misses her brother terribly but knows she must find a way to survive if she ever wants them to be reunited. But just as she is becoming established in the household her past returns to shatter her happy life and ruin the chances of her ever finding Alfie again.