For Tara Flynn, red-haired, bright and ambitious, Ballygrace House represents everything she one day hopes to be - beautiful, elegant and a world away from the little village near Tullamore where she is being raised by her grandfather. But the wealthy Fitzgeralds who live at Ballygrace have little time for village girls, until Madeleine, their unstable, delicate daughter, meets Tara. Tara is everything Madeleine isn't, yet the two girls find themselves becoming firm friends. When Tara meets Gabriel, Madeleine's older brother who's studying at Dublin University, she becomes painfully aware of the differences between the Fitzgeralds and the Flynns. Without a wealthy family behind her, Tara will have to work her way to the life she dreams of. Then Madeleine's health takes a turn for the worse and Tara finds herself in a heartbreaking position. She has no choice but leave the world of Ballygrace behind her and flee to England. The dancehalls of Manchester in the 1950s offer a wealth of temptations to good-looking young Irish girls, but Tara is determined not to succumb. Instead, she vows to climb the ladder of success alone, if she can just escape the shadow of Ballygrace...