Davie Armstrong struggles hard for his place at Cock Shield Farm and finds himself at odds with the owner, a man of mordant temper and villainous pride. He watches as his master, Angus McBain, publicly thrashes young Molly Geary for refusing to name the man who made her pregnant. And yet, only an hour later, Davie sees the two of them alone in the malthouse, and learns that the child is McBain’s. But the master’s wife is also pregnant. And a few months later the birth of the McBain’s son, Amos, unleashes violence and tragedy at the farm. Born emotionally and physically crippled, Amos will learn to wield the power of frightening intensity over everyone around him… Feathers in the Fire is a dark tale of love, loss and redemption set on a tenant farm at the end of the nineteenth century.
Author
Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, who Catherine believed was her older sister. Catherine began work in service but eventually moved south to Hastings, where she met and married Tom Cookson, a local grammar-school master. Although she was originally acclaimed as a regional writer - her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award for the best regional novel of 1968 - her readership quickly spread throughout the world, and her many best-selling novels established her as one of the most popular contemporary woman novelist. She received an OBE in 1985, was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993, and was appointed an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1997. For many years she lived near Newcastle upon Tyne.
