Scotland, 1849. The O&#39;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.<br /><br />Determined not to give up, the two older sisters - Maeve and Kathleen - find back-breaking work in Templeton&#39;s carpet factory, while the youngest, 9-year-old Finola, is enrolled in a new Catholic school.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />A story of survival, social history and second chances, Mary Edward&#39;s &#39;Gallowgate&#39; is a fictitious, yet informative look at young Irish immigrants&#39; life in 1850s Glasgow, Scotland.