In the summer of 1832, the most dreaded disease of nineteenth century urban England, cholera, reached the city of Exeter. Oliver Sanders, a lad of sixteen, who earns his living by working one of the innumerable small boats that transport people across the River Exe, watches his father die of the disease. His mother, who is very frail, mentally and physically, loses her reason when this happens and is taken into the workhouse. Oliver is suddenly left alone in the family shop, for his elder brother Paul moves out to go and live in the house of the girl he is about to marry. At first, Oliver is elated by his freedom from family ties, but he soon finds is own company depressing, despite the friendship he forms with the eccentric Matthew Cornish, one of the city's doctors, and gathers together an odd new family which is the source of extraordinary happiness and heartbreak. The factual background of the story is drawn from a detailed account of the Exeter cholera epidemic written at the time by one of the city's doctors and the illustrations here reproduced are from his book.