Amazon.com description: Product Description: 'An honest and sympathetic account which leaves the reader even more admiring of Cookson's remarkable achievements' - PUBLISHING NEWS 'A dramatic and unsettling story' - SUNDAY TELEGRAPH In writing this biography, many of Catherine Cookson's friends have been willing to talk to the author. Even more importantly, Kathleen Jones has had access to early drafts of Catherine's own autobiography, hitherto unseen, and hours of privately taped conversation...Born in 1906, the illegitimate daughter of a domestic servant, Catherine Cookson was brought up on Tyneside in one of the poorest communities of the western world. Her childhood was marred by violence, abuse, alcoholism, shame and guilt. But, with enormous courage and determination, she made her way out of the slums to become one of the best-selling novelists in the world.