Molly Skene was born into a crofting family near Forres. Through the hungry 20's and 30's, she and her siblings ran to and from Dallas along the green road enjoying its changing moods and seasons. School days were peppered with kindness and cruelty but home was a grand place to come back to. Snapshots of her life in school and the village are added to the background of a home-life of simple fare and hard work. Moments of great hilarity and fun are interspersed with times of tragedy and loss too awful to bear. The day the pig came home in the sidecar, the haircut that went wrong, the ferocious temper of the dominie and the turning of the turnips into stone are all part of the daily life that was Branchill in the early years of last century.

Entering the world of work, Molly's travels take her eventually to Belgium as war was ending. She finally arrives in Oban where she finds a badminton partner called Johnny Livingstone, still trying to pick up the pieces of his life after spending 5 years as a P.O.W. in Germany-years that had seen many men like himself 'wrenched from their ordinary lives and sent to hell.'

In this moving account of hardship, resilience and survival, two 'ordinary' people are brought together----'ordinary' people who have far from ordinary stories to tell.