Set in Chepsford, a fictional industrial Border town characterised by drunkenness and brawls, it takes suffering as its subject matter. Domestic life is unsettled by strong opinions on love and sin, while notions of religion and fate are debated with passionate intensity.

At the same time as Margiad Evans draws a compelling portrait of Chepsford's violence and dissipation, her interest in the very process of writing and the possibilities and limitations of language are also inscribed in the novel. Her fiction is the result of 'translating what I have learnt into scribbled words on thin paper, pinned together with ordinary pins from a pink card'.

Published in 1936, Margiad Evans's fourth and final novel.