This is a family saga, over five generations, set against the social history of the South Yorkshire pit communities in the twentieth century: disasters, strikes and galas. It is the story of the North family: their relationships, births, deaths, family break-ups and get-togethers. Nigel North, at fifty-five, leads a secluded life in Newcastle after his wife's death. He has every expectation that it will stay that way until, in 1992, he receives a copy of the Last Will and Testament of his Uncle Albert, a South Yorkshire pitman who he has never met. He has been left a large sum of money. His ten cousins, of whom he has never heard, have each been left a much smaller sum. Nigel cannot conceive how his uncle knows of his existence, why he should bequeath him so much money and why his father severed himself from his family. The answers lie back in the pitmen's strike and, then, the inter-war years.