"In the south of Scotland, residents get their chimneys vacuum-cleaned. But in the isolated villages in the very north of Scotland, the villagers rely on the services of the itinerant sweep, Pete Ray, and his old-fashioned brushes. Pete is always able to find work in the Scottish highlands, until one day when Police Constable Hamish Macbeth notices blood dripping onto the floor of a villager's fireplace, and a dead body stuffed inside the chimney....

After Nicholas, a poor nineteenth-century chimney sweep, finishes cleaning a chimney on Christmas Eve, his last customer gives him a warm coat and a pretty gift, and tells the boy to pass the kindness on.

While searching for his younger brother who has been "sold" to be trained as a chimney sweep in eighteenth-century London, thirteen-year-old Ned meets the itinerant preacher John Wesley whose message changes the lives of his entire family.