Book description
One winter's night, in the coal-hole in her yard, Rosie finds that a
woman sheltering there has been severely beaten by thugs. At a glance,
Kathleen looks like an unkempt, aged vagabond who tramps the roads
carrying all her worldly possessions in a grubby tapestry bag. Her only
friend is the mangy old dog who accompanies her; the sum of her life is
in the diaries she so zealously guards. Yet close up, Rosie can see that
Kathleen has a gracious beauty - the 'look' of a respectable lady of
means. In hospital, fighting for her life, yet moved by Rosie's care and
compassion, Kathleen entrusts the diaries to her, urging her to look at
them. There, in the soft glow of the lamp, Rosie reads a heartrending
tale of stolen dreams, true love, heartache and loss. A tale that,
somehow, must have a happy ending... 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.'
