What is the dwelling place? It is a cave on the open Northumberland fells to which fifteen-year-old Cissie Brodie takes her nine brothers and sisters in order to escape the workhouse in 1832. And this is the story of her heroic fight to rear them under appalling conditions of cold, near starvation and persecution.
In Matthew Turnbull, the wheelwright she gains one friend, but Matthew’s protection cannot save her from the fierce enmity of the landowner’s daughter, nor from being raped by his son, and so bringing into the dwelling place another mouth to feed.
