A little girl is taken in by her loser father after her mother is arrested. The girl is put into acting

Adaptation of Catherine Cookson's novel. In mid-19th century Yorkshire, Hannah Boyle is left with the family of Matthew Thornton, the man her dying mother claims fathered her. Ill-treated by Thornton's bitter and vindictive wife Anne, who views Hannah only as evidence of her husband's infidelity, she is married off to the village butcher, whose waspish mother torments her further. But through her patience, intelligence and strength, she wins her freedom and the man she loves.

A torrid affair between two women, a struggling artist and a flame-haired blues singer, upsets a man who has a thing for the girl.