It's 1952, and after losing several jobs, twenty-year-old Rona reluctantly agrees to help her father run his bakery shop. Life in the small seaside town of Kirkham is quiet and uneventful, with many of the young lads still away on National Service, and Rona feels nothing will ever change. She dreams of working in Edinburgh or Glasgow, or even going to London to become a model, but her father will not hear of it. Rona was seldom down in spirits for long, however. This was the beginning of a new year—and who knew what might happen? Maybe, she told herself, romance was just around the corner?

It was September 1962, and the building of the new Forth Road Bridge was bringing excitement to the small community of North Queensferry. But would everyone welcome the changes that lay ahead?For Nancy and Joe's family the bridge wasn't their only concern: there was Lorna, their daughter, who had become very secretive lately, reluctant to say where she was going or who she was meeting; their son Matt was working on the new bridge, and Nancy hated to think of the dangers he faced every day.Meanwhile Nancy's two lodgers, attractive young teacher Shona and Walter, a foreman on the new bridge, seemed only ever to snap at each other, and although it was none of his business, there was something about Shona McAllister's boyfriend that made Walter uneasy. . .