Book description
Lucy Nolan is the golden girl. The only daughter of local grocers,
Sally and Mike Nolan, she's grown up in a home of total love and
security. The one thing her heart desires is that Jack Hanson might ask
her to marry him, and when he does eventually propose, Lucy is prepared
to give up everything to be with him - even though it means leaving her
beloved parents to live abroad where Jack has been offered an exciting
business opportunity. But then, almost on the eve of the marriage
itself, tragedy strikes. And for the first time in her life, Lucy is
forced to realise that Fate, which has been so kind to her, can also be
just as cruel. The story of Josephine Cox is as extraordinary as
anything in her novels. Born in a cotton-mill house in Blackburn, she
was one of ten children. Her parents, she says, brought out the worst in
each other, and life was full of tragedy and hardship - but not without
love and laughter. At the age of sixteen, Josephine met and married 'a
caring and wonderful man', and had two sons. When the boys started
school, she decided to go to college and eventually gained a place at
Cambridge University, though was unable to take this up as it would have
meant living away from home. However, she did go into teaching, while at
the same time helping to renovate the derelict council house that was
their home, coping with the problems caused by her mother's unhappy home
life - and writing her first full-length novel. Not surprisingly, she
then won the 'Superwoman of Great Britain' Award, for which her family
had secretly entered her, and this coincided with the acceptance of her
novel for publication. Josephine gave up teaching in order to write full
time. She says, 'I love writing, both recreating scenes and characters
from my past, together with new storylines which mingle naturally with
the old. I could never imagine a single day without writing, and it's
been that way since as far back as I can remember.'
