The Forsyth Girls

Can a woman take control of her own destiny? Saltcoats, Scotland, 1909. After his wife’s death, Hamilton Forsyth announces his intention to leave the Ayrshire town of Saltcoats, convinced his duties to his three grown children are complete. The decision shocks the family. Walter is set to inherit the ironmongery and is engaged to a respectable bride; Belle manages the household accounts; and Morna, a lively socialite, expects a proposal of her own. But scandal soon isolates the Forsyths from the community they once cherished. Matters worsen when Walter reveals his affair with Sarah, the family’s housemaid – now pregnant – and insists on marrying her. Thrust into her new role, Sarah struggles, while Belle and Morna resent the upheaval. Belle leaves to live with their strict Aunt Beatrice, and Morna takes lodgings elsewhere, reconnecting with a former nursemaid. There she meets the ambitious Samuel Gilmartin. Encouraged by a former classmate, Morna becomes a teacher and is drawn into the suffragette movement – beginning to imagine a different future.