In the mid-1850s, life for an orphan was grim, as Kirsten MacGregor discovered when her parents died suddenly on a journey to Northumberland, leaving her penniless and alone in the hands of a cruel farmer. Somehow, Kirsten survived her terrible childhood – only to be sold, at the age of fourteen, to a traveling tinker – a vicious man who raped her and held her captive until the fateful day they were separated during a storm. Rescued from the flood by the Flynn family, she gave birth to a child as the waters raged about her. At the same time, Florence, mistress of the great house nearby, was told that her newborn son was dead. The two women entered into a secret bargain, an arrangement that was to change Kirsten’s fortune and place her in the middle of a bitter feud between two families. The Slow Awakening is a powerful novel, originally published under the pseudonym of Catherine Marchant, and reflects vividly the violence and cruelty that a poverty-stricken girl might endure in that period.
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.
