Mick Crossan is a ‘homer’, removed by social services from his widowed mother and slum home in the Gorbals and placed in ‘care’.
Along with his sister, Mick is forcibly removed from the slum for his ‘moral protection’, but faces a life of abuse, first at the hands of priests and nuns, and then on farms as cheap labour. Through it all Mick’s spirit burns bright, and his determination to find his family and reclaim his identity draws him back to Glasgow and eventual happiness. In 1950s Scotland, thousands of children were removed from their families for a ‘better life’ in the rural idyll of the Scottish Highlands as ‘boarded-out’ children.
