From Ardrossan

It is about 1905, in Ardrossan on the Firth of Clyde - a grey morning, the tide out, the smell of weed and coal-smoke low over the harbour. On Harbour Place a boy steps into the lane, a ship-carpenter's son, all elbows and a good clear singing voice. A few streets over, a draper's daughter is sent to the shop for thread. The two back greens very nearly touch.

This is the story of Alexander Shearer (1887-1921) and Annie Barclay Tyre (1889-1979) - two children of one Scottish harbour town who grew up a street apart and built a life together on the far side of the world. He went to sea; she trained as a children's nurse and crossed the world to marry him. He died young, in 1921, before his last child was born. She lived another fifty-eight years - going home to Scotland and back again, keeping a shop, marrying again, and outlasting nearly everyone in this book.

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This story stands on sound family research - birth, marriage and death records, ship's crew lists, newspapers and passenger lists. Where the record falls silent, scenes are reconstructed in keeping with the people and the times, and are marked as such.