Matty is fifteen and, in his Tyneside home in the 1960s, this means it is time for him to leave school and follow his father into the docks and get a job in ship building. All Matty really wants, however, is to work with animals, tend them, help them and care for them. But he has no qualifications and his parents have no real understanding of his ambition – they won’t even let him keep Nelson, the old stray dog he befriends and takes home. Yet, finally, it is because of Nelson that Matty gets permission to go on a camping holiday with his friends, Joe and Willie. And this holiday, on a farm high on the fells, will take Matty through unexpected dangers but to a new and satisfying way of life. An exciting and heartwarming tale that will strike a chord of recognition with all children with a desire to choose their own path in life.
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.
