About This Book
A domineering bootshop owner in late-nineteenth-century Lancashire clashes with his three daughters when the eldest rejects his control and reshapes her own fate. She marries a meek but skilled craftsman and, by practical determination and business acumen, sets up an independent workshop that outgrows her father's expectations. The household dynamic shifts as commerce, pride, and social aspirations expose rigid gender roles and class attitudes, while comic situations and local color underscore a pragmatic critique of authority and the rewards of initiative.