Winners & losers - Catrin Collier

Megan Williams is eighteen and in love with the boy next door, Victor Evans. But Tonypandy in 1910 is a town of poverty, hardship and strife, garrisoned by troops brought in to control the striking miners whose anger all too frequently erupts into bouts of violence and rioting.

At thirteen Megan is sent from her family's farm to keep house for her widower uncle and his five children, but when her uncle can no longer pay her wages, she is forced to seek work elsewhere. The only people who are hiring are those that run the houses where the police and soldiers lodge.

Ostracised by friends and former neighbours who believe she has betrayed her class by working for the enemy, Megan is not the only one fighting for survival. Her lover turns to bare knuckle boxing in the hope of making enough money for them to marry. But Megan's father would rather see his daughter dead than married to a Catholic, particularly one whose father and brother are marked as strike ringleaders. Tempers and violence flare on both sides of the dispute. Caught in the middle, Victor and Megan find themselves fighting for the right to love one another, remain together and build a future they can share.