It spans three-quarters of a century of Scottish life, tracing the couple's wanderings from the idyll of their childhood in Galloway, through work for the landed gentry in the Borders and Fife, to their fall from grace in the depression years in industrial Glasgow. Inevitably, as their children are born and grow up and as the years slip away, their rural background becomes another Eden, yet Barke keeps sentimentality in check with his reflective description of the changing face of Scottish society, in which Jean and David are pawns in the development of economic cause and political effect.