Proud and canny, ignorant and intensely ambitious, Hannah Massey is a born ruler. Her kingdom may be only a working-class household in County Durham, but within its walls her iron will governs a predominantly male family and her word is unchallengeable law. Now, in late middle age, her ambition is yet to be satisfied. She wants to see her brood living in the house where she was in service as a young girl. The apple of Hannah’s eye is her pretty younger daughter, Rosie, who has just returned home after a spell in London. Rosie had gone south, so Hannah thought, to escape the passionate pursuit of a young man she had known for most of her life. Her return is shrouded in mystery and evasive responses, and when the truth does come out, Hannah’s world is torn apart and her dreams are shattered.
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.
