Olive Wickes knew a better life once. Before their old master died, her family lived in comfortable servants' quarters beside a garden where birdsong echoed through the day. But the new young master turned them out, and now Olive, her parents, and her five-year-old brother Jimmy are struggling to get by. In their cold and desolate tenement, Olive sings to Jimmy about the birds of the garden, trying to cling on to hope.
Things go from bad to worse when her father succumbs to consumption. Without his job at the docks, the family can't get by. They try to survive on the streets, but it's an impossible task for a destitute mother and her two small children.
Olive embarks on a journey of loss and survival in the brutal setting of Victorian London. She has to survive the deaths of loved ones, the appalling conditions in the slums of Old Nichol, and worst of all, the horrors of a match factory and the deadly diseases lurking inside.
But one bright thread runs through her story: a kind and handsome boy who gives her bread and whistles just like a nightingale. Might he be the thread by which she can pull herself back up into a better life?
