Though by nature an optimist, when Sara Pallister arrives in the mining town of Whitton Grange, she cannot help but be appalled by the welcome she receives. Her father having died and left their farm bankrupt, Weardale-born Sara is now the poor cousin, reluctantly taken into the household of her officious, narrow-minded Uncle Alfred whose wife Aunt Ida does little but spoil their unbearable seven-year-old, agree with her opinionated husband and attend endless W.I. socials. Determined to make Sara pay her way, Uncle Alfred hires her out to work in Dolly Sergeant's grocer's shop where she meets funny, bashful young Raymond Kirkup and his warm-hearted aunt, Louie. And it is through Raymond that Sara encounters the family that is to change her life: the Demarcos. Exotic, extrovert and Italian, they are the owners of Whitton Grange's popular ice-cream parlour. Even as the shadows of the Second World War grow more menacing and hostility increases towards the foreign Demarcos, Sara finds herself irresistibly drawn to leather-jacketed, motorbike-riding Joe Demarco...