Scotland, 1849. The O'Donnell girls are driven from their Wicklow home by starvation and an Anglo-Irish landlord. After losing their father, the three sail to Glasgow with thousands of others in search of a new start.

Determined not to give up, the two older sisters — Maeve and Kathleen — find back-breaking work in Templeton's carpet factory, while the youngest, 9-year-old Finola, is enrolled in a new Catholic school.

After meeting the wealthy Patrick Reilly and his wife, the three receive a promise for a better and more prosperous life. But in tumultuous and dangerous mid-19th-century Scotland, they will need to give it their all to survive and reach their goals.

A story of survival, social history and second chances, Mary Edward's 'Gallowgate' is a fictitious, yet informative look at young Irish immigrants' life in 1850s Glasgow, Scotland.