Doctor Frances Brakespeare has settled into her position at the Orchard Cottage Hospital and sets about introducing new ideas – principally regarding family planning. Not everyone embraces the new knowledge or that women should be able to choose the size of their families.

As if that’s not enough to contend with, the past comes closer than she’d ever expected along with legal threats from Izzy Brakespeare’s sister. It looks as if she’s going to have more than one battle on her hands.

And then there’s Nurse Lucy Daniels whose fallen in love with a man from a different class at a time when such an event was frowned on. Will she win through? Like some other things in the Somerset town of Norton Dene hope persists that fate will lend a hand.