About this item

On a summer afternoon in 1854, rag and bone lady Aggie Winkowski rescues 10-year-old Millie Forester from the streets as the pretty child's unfortunate mother is hauled off to jail. Aggie fully expects to be rid of her amusing but talkative little charge by morning. But the child's tragic circumstances and vulnerability soften the old woman's heart, and the two develop a relationship that changes Aggie's life and shapes Millie's destiny.



About the Author

Catherine Cookson

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.

Photograph from the Catherine Cookson Collection, Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Centre at Boston University



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