Little Clare Hamilton is just nine years old when her childhood is abruptly ended by the sudden death of both her parents in a typhoid epidemic. Although part of a large extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins in and around Armagh, Clare feels bereft, and with the cares of the world on her shoulders. Claire settles for a time in Belfast, but she longs to go back to live in the country, and she seizes the opportunity of returning to her blacksmith grandfather. At first tentative and awkward, the relationship between the old man and his granddaughter develops into a warm and loving bond that will sustain Clare through the years of her adolescence, as she grows into a lovely, intelligent young woman with the world at her feet.