The Angels of Lovely Lane

It is 1953 and five very different girls are arriving at the nurses' home in Lovely Lane, Liverpool, to start their training at St Angelus Hospital. Dana has escaped from her family farm on the west coast of Ireland. Victoria is running away from a debt-ridden aristocratic background. Beth is an army brat and throws in her lot with bitchy Celia Forsyth. And Pammy Tanner has come from quite the wrong side of the tracks in Liverpool. The world in which they now find themselves is complicated and deeply hierarchical, from lonely but formidable Matron down to Dessie who rules the Porter's boys with military firmness. Everyone has their place at St Angelus and woe betide anyone who strays from it. But when an unknown girl is admitted, after a botched late abortion in a backstreet kitchen, a tragedy begins to unfold which will rock the world of St Angelus to its foundations.