A Life Worth Living

This story is set in the slums of Glasgow in the 1970s and 1980s. It exposes the early lives of Mary and her brother John, born to lower-class Irish immigrant parents; their struggles through a childhood of neglect and abuse and the constant fear of their violent father and schizophrenic mother.
Mary escapes at the age of sixteen and returns a year later to find her fourteen year old brother living on the street. She takes him into her care and soon after becomes his legal guardian. They remain together for five years.
By this time Mary is living with a controlling and volatile man. He introduces her to drugs and the seedy underworld of Glasgow's bedsits, drug dealers and criminals. They are uprooted many times and Mary believes that she is destined to end her days in the filthy room in which they finally find themselves. But John dreams of a brighter future and convinces her to move to London permanently.