The Blind Miller - Couverture souple

Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, whom she believed to be her older sister. She 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 of contemporary women novelists. After receiving an OBE in 1985, Catherine Cookson was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1997. For many years she lived near Newcastle upon Tyne. She died shortly before her ninety-second birthday, in June 1998.

Mary Hetherington was a mother who dominated her family. She was kind, efficient and generous - providing they did what she wanted. But when David brought home Sarah from the 'wrong end' of the Fifteen Streets, a girl who brought life and laughter into her dustless house, she soon took against her.

Then when she discovered that Sarah was loved not just by David but by all her menfolk, Mary Hetherington realised that this 'interloper', if allowed to go unchecked, would become a challenge to her authority - while Sarah, for her part, found that even the best people had their quarrels, and secrets they were anxious to hide . . .