Steven Whinnery

Life in a Scottish New Town

The oil rigs provide rich pickings for those who work on them, but for wives isolated from husbands affluence is not enough.

In 1965, at the age of 25, Alan Ackland is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a business associate. In 1971, Sylvia Barker, lonely and depressed after a failed marriage and with two young children to bring up alone, seeks a new direction in her life and applies to become a voluntary prison visitor. Several years later their paths cross.