Keith Drinkel

The novel is set in South Wales in the reign of Queen Victoria. It tells the story of the Morgans, a respectable mining family of the South Wales Valleys, through the eyes of the youngest son, Huw Morgan.

Mrs. Holroyd is married to a loutish miner, who drinks, apparently patronizes prostitutes, and apparently brutalizes her. When a gentlemanly neighbor makes romantic advances to her, she wishes her husband dead. Sooner than she hoped, her wish comes true--when her husband dies in a mining accident.