Coming up 16, Tilly Trotter is different from the other girls in her village. Tall for her age and coltish, she is not afraid of taking on 'man's work' to help out the grandparents who raised her in a cottage at the edge of the Sopwith Estate. Testing times lay ahead for Tilly, often hard to endure and even bringing her the undeserved taint of being suspected of witchcraft. She only loves one man, farmer Simon Bentwood, and is heartbroken to discover he is betrothed to another. A spurned suitor takes a terrible revenge, and a betrayal forces her into the cruel drudgery of the local mine. But Tilly refuses to let her spirit be broken - determined that all this will only serve to make her stronger - and she grows to become a young woman of innate courage and fortitude.