[1] The book is set in a fictional mining town in Scotland in the early part of the 20th century, and it relates the struggles of a miner called Tam Docherty and his family.

We learn that Tam is a lapsed Catholic while Jenny is a Protestant; we meet the eldest son Mick, the middle son Angus, the daughter Kathleen and her future husband Jack, as well as Jenny's father Mairtin and Tam's father, Old Conn, a devout Catholic.

In Book Two the outbreak of war has a very direct impact on the Docherty family when Mick announces that he plans to join the army with his friend Danny Hawkins.

This is against the wishes of Mick's girlfriend May as well as those of both Jenny and Tam, who cites Labour campaigner Keir Hardie's opinion that it is "a capitalist war".

Book Two finishes with New Year 1920 being celebrated in the Docherty household with family and friends while Conn secretly has a sexual encounter with the much older Jessie Langley.

As Book Three opens, Angus accosts Jack as he leaves work and accuses him of violently abusing Kathleen.

Later, Angus informs Tam that he plans to move to a different pit and operate a squad of miners on a contract to the mine-owners.

McIlvanney said the novel was "an attempt to democratise traditional culture, to give working-class life the vote in the literature of heroism.