Once again, Kevin Sullivan has pulled off an engaging, nostalgic, family-friendly TV series reminiscent of his popular Road to Avonlea, though this time with a more serious bent. Set in Ontario, Wind at My Back follows the lives of the Bailey family as they struggle to stay together in the midst of the Great Depression.

Hit hard by the economic crash, Honey Bailey (Cynthia Belliveau) is finally forced to close her treasured store, the only source of income for her family. She and her husband (Dylan Provencher) are left with no choice but to move their two sons, Hub and Fat, and baby daughter, Violet, to beg employment from Honey’s mother-in-law, Mae Bailey (Shirley Douglas). A domineering matriarch and proprietress of the family silver mine, Mae Bailey virtually disinherited her son after his marriage to a woman she did not choose. Despite the desperate times, she refuses to acknowledge her son and his family beyond allowing them to live in a small cottage she owns.

When tragedy strikes, Honey is left with no alternative but to leave her children under Mae’s care and leave in search of work. Determined to now control her grandsons’ lives, Mae makes life miserable for the two boys. The one light in their life is their single, whimsically charming Aunt Grace (Kathryn Greenwood), who is searching for the courage to break free of her mother’s control. Like in Avonlea, there is no sexual content and virtually no language. There is, however, a fair amount of violence: a man dies in an accident, a shed explodes, a boy accidentally hacks his leg with an axe, and a neighbor shoots the boys’ dog. Hub and Fat spy a teenage boy who is about to harm a girl, and heroically leap to the rescue, but the older boy falls on some rocks and (presumably) hits his head and dies.