The bleak coal-mining settlement of Denniston, isolated high on a plateau above New Zealand's West Coast, is a place that makes or breaks those who live there. All sorts arrive here to work the mines and bring down the coal: ex-goldminers down on their luck, others running from the law or from a woman or worse. They work alongside recruited English miners, solid and skilled, who scorn these disorganised misfits and want them off the hill.
Into this chaotic community come five-year-old Rose and her mother, riding up the incline, at night, during a storm. No one knows what has driven them there, but most agree the mother must be desperate to choose Denniston; worse, to choose that drunkard, Jimmy Cork, as a bedfellow. The indomitable Rose is left to fend for herself, finding allies and enemies in her struggle to secure a place in this tough and often aggressive community.