Evie spent her early years left outside on the step. With a drunk for a father and a neglectful mother, all little Evie has ever craved is a safe home and a normal existence. Her young eyes had seen so much, but this never tainted her spirit. If it wasn't for her best friend, Gary, and a friendly dog called Whisky, Evie might never have made it to her 16th birthday.

Rachel Booker has a difficult start in life. When her father dies deep in gambling debt, her mother must harden herself to make ends meet but becomes so hard she has little room left for affection or warmth. Mother and daughter work at the open market in Birmingham, selling second-hand clothes or whatever they can find just to put a little food on the table. But the market has a silver lining: it's there that Rachel makes her first childhood friend, Danny.

Family of Women is the story of three generations of women. Bessie: scarred by a childhood of poverty in the slums of Victorian Birmingham and left a young widow with four children, is a hard, bullying woman who will go to disturbing lengths to keep her family under her thumb. Violet: one of Bessie's four children, marries young to escape, into the arms of a man whose life will be broken by war. Linda: grows up on a large housing estate in the 1950s with older sister Joyce and her beloved young sister Carol. Intelligent and energetic, she craves education and something more than the life she sees around her.

1940: As war closes in and the bombs fall, on the Homefront, two sisters must find their place in a new world of ‘men's' work, in which a telegraph can break your heart and nothing in the future is certain. Growing up in Birmingham, Sylvia and Audrey Whitehouse were always like chalk and cheese. As young women, while Sylvia dreams of her forthcoming life married to fiancé Ian. Audrey can't bear the thought of being tied down by marriage and children.

Emma Brown is a happy-go-lucky child, content to work hard at school, and to play hopscotch with her friends on the pavement outside her house in the run-down Nechells area of Birmingham. As long as everything is all right at home with her Ma and Pa, her little sister Joyce and brother Sid, then life is good. But after Em's mother, Cynthia, has her baby she just doesn't seem to be able to cope.

The Second World War has finally come to a close. Birmingham is welcoming home its menfolk, and a new chapter is beginning in Rachel Booker's life. Her husband has returned, and the family that struggled for survival throughout the uncertain war years is now together. But family life settles into a routine, and Rachel, unsatisfied, starts to yearn for more.

Maryann Nelson's widowed mother, Flo, sees the opportunity to better her family by marrying the local undertaker, Norman Griffin. Though on the surface a caring family man, Maryann and her sister, Sal, soon discover that he has another side to him. For Sal, it is too much to bear and she escapes, leaving Maryann to take revenge on Griffin. The chance of a new life opens up when she befriends Joel Batholomew, who works on the canal. Aboard his narrowboat, she finds herself falling in love with her new life.

For Rose Lucas, a spirited, intelligent girl born into a large family in the slums of pre-war Birmingham, life is hard. But through her friendship with Diana, daughter of a vicar from middle-class Moseley, she learns to aspire to a different and better existence. But life seldom follows dreams, and after losing a love she has fought hard for, and after travelling in Italy, she returns to Birmingham with her hopes shattered. But Rose's powerful spirit will not be defeated.

Three very different women work together at Cadbury's Bournville factory, and their lives become entwined by war and work: and a child called David. Edie, the main character, marries young to escape her unhappy family home. Widowed at 19 and, after losing her child from the marriage, she faces the war grieving and lonely. Then one night during the Blitz, an infant mysteriously abandoned during the bombing is handed into her care.

In 1984, two young mothers meet at a toddler group in Birmingham. As their friendship grows, they share with each other the difficulties and secrets in their lives: Joanne, a sweet, shy girl, is increasingly afraid of her husband. The lively, promising man she married has become hostile and violent and she is too ashamed to tell anyone. When her mother, Margaret is suddenly rushed into hospital, the bewildered family find that there are things about their mother of which they had no idea.

The early 1900s: Cradley Heath, a town in the Black Country near Birmingham and centre of the world’s chain-making trade. Lucy Butler, a young girl crippled by a cruel accident, lives with her two brothers and widowed mother, a chain-maker barely making ends meet. When tragedy strikes, the Butler family is separated and Lucy is taken in by Bertha Hipkiss, another impoverished chain maker, struggling to look after her own family. 

Beautiful, dark-haired Lily has been abandoned in a Birmingham slum as a tiny child. With few clues as to her identity she endures a childhood of loneliness and loss. At eighteen she applies for a post as nanny with the family of a Captain Fairford, a soldier in Ambala, north India and his highly strung wife Susan. Lily is drawn into the emotional life of the Fairford family and adores her charge, two year old Cosmo.

In the New Year of 1936, Gwen Purdy, aged 21, leaves her home to become a schoolteacher in a poor area of Birmingham. Her parents are horrified, but she has the support of her fiance, a recently ordained clergyman. Her early weeks in Birmingham are an eye-opener: at the school she faces a class of 52 children, some of whose homes are among Birmingham's very poorest.

Jessica Hart's life is changed forever with the death of her mother. Her manipulative new stepmother tries to force her into marrying an older man, and to Jess, a bright, pretty, young girl who dreams of finding true love, the idea of being trapped in a loveless marriage is unthinkable. So she escapes to Birmingham to her Aunt Olive, the last remaining connection to her mother. But Jess' security is threatened when she meets a friend of the family and falls passionately in love.

Winnie Berry had been the landlady for the Battersea Tavern for over 25 years and loved every minute of it. Her husband Brian preferred the quiet of the upstairs, but Winnie liked to be in the thick of it: the atmosphere and the company. While her son has taken after his father in more ways than one, she can't help but love him - David might not be able to hold down a job, but she would do anything to keep him safe. After all, once upon a time she'd made a mistake - something she'd do anything to put right.