In late nineteenth-century Liverpool, the hills of Everton look down on the River Mersey and the thriving port that brings so much wealth to the city. But beyond the gilded prosperity lies a confusion of black-roofed tenements, courts and slums stretching as far as the eye can see, and a neglect of any pursuit beyond the merest means of existence. Eight-year-old Jobe is oblivious to both the struggle of life in the slums where Kitty, his Catholic mother, was born, and the opulence of the rolling pastures of the Wirral where Albert, his Protestant father, grew up. Ostracised from their respective families because of their sectarian splitting love, Kitty and Albert live only for each other and their son. It is not until an unforeseen circumstance imposes onto their lives the disease of desperation and deprivation that they become aware of the poverty, industrial unrest and sectarian storms blowing through the city.