Sarah Love — Geraldine O'Neill

As she puts the final stitches in her perfect wedding dress, Sarah Love receives dreadful news which wrecks all her future plans. Heartbroken and humiliated, she leaps at a chance to make a fresh start away from her native Tullamore.

Within a week she has crossed the Irish Sea, and is lodging with other young women in a house off Newcastle city centre, just a short walk from Harrison's â€" the rundown knitting and sewing shop where she will work for reserved and troubled spinster, Lucy Harrison.

Sarah now finds herself amongst people of different classes, religion and race, and when her Irish nationality is attacked she must discover the skills to survive.

Putting the past behind her, she channels her energies into rebuilding the old-fashioned, neglected Harrison's into a thriving business and her wonderful sewing and design skills soon lead her down a new and exciting path in life.

A path without love though, as she is too raw to consider romance again. Or so she thinks …