Claudia and her younger sister, Jenny, live with their parents, Louisa and Cormack Muldoon, in their grandmother's house in Blodwen Street. Louisa has a good job in a dress shop on Scotland Road and Cormack is a supervisor at the nearby tobacco manufactory. They assume they are settled for life, but then Grandpa Muldoon has a seizure and begs his son to return to Kilnevin and the family croft.