Brought up amid near-Dickensian squalour in the tough East End of
Glasgow and sexually abused by her uncle, Janey married into a Glasgow
criminal family as a teenager, then found herself having to cope with
the murder of her mother, violence, religious sectarianism, abject
poverty and a frightening family of in-laws. First-hand, Janey saw the
gangland violence and met extraordinary characters within an enclosed
and seldom-revealed Glasgow underworldfrom the grim and
far-from-Swinging 60s, to the discos of the 70s, to the tidal wave of
heroin addiction which swept through and engulfed Glasgow's East End
during the 1980s. This evocative, intimate and moving portrayal of a
woman forced to fight every day for her family's future will strike a
chord with anyone who has ever struggled against adversity."