When Siona Llewelyn, the huge, rugged ferryman who carried passengers across the River Swan, pulled an attempted suicide out of the water, he did not realise what the girl would come to mean to him and to his family. For Nerys, without friends or money, went to work in the ferryman’s home, cooking and cleaning for his seven sons, and looking after Siona’s tired and faded wife, worn-out with child-bearing and now pregnant yet again.

          But tragedy and conflict were to strike at the Llewelyns, and Nerys was to find herself at the very heart of the family feuds and rivalries.