The Flood

As a young girl Mary Miller had fallen into the hot burn - a torrent of warm chemical run-off from the local coal mine. Fished out white-haired and half dead, she was initially treated with sympathy. But all that changed when the young man who pushed her in died in an accident down the mines just two days later. From then on she was regarded with a mixture of suspicion and fascination by her God-fearing community. Now, many years later, she is hardly less alone. She is the mother of a bastard son, Sandy, and caught up in a faltering affair with a local schoolteacher. Sandy, meanwhile, has fallen in love with a strange homeless girl. But the search for happiness isn't easy, and mother and son are gradually being forced to come to terms with the past and a dark secret from Mary's childhood.