The Byrnes are a fishing family, living a life of grinding poverty on the Connemara coast. Dympna, the only girl, adores her father Micheal. She does her best to help her English mother and the family rub along by working hard and expecting little.

But beneath the smooth-seeming surface there are hidden secrets. Beatrice idolises her clever eldest son, but her attitude to her husband and to Dympna is puzzling. Yet when the family desperately needs money it is Dympna who crosses the water to Liverpool, to send money back for them.

Meanwhile, in Liverpool orphaned, half-starved Jimmy Ruddock struggles to escape from his background with little success until he meets Elsie, a tough young slum-dweller who helps him to better himself. Then he starts work abroad a Fleetwood trawler, and meets up with Dympna...

Set in the late 1920s and 30s, No Silver Spoon charts the pleasures and pains of life - and love - in the glorious countryside of Connemara and in the fiercely competitive streets of the Liverpool slums. It confirms Katie Flynn as one of the most beloved and bestselling saga writers in Britain.