RAG MAID

When Millie's mother abandons her late one afternoon in 1854, fate brings the seven year old to Aggie's door, and life will never be the same for either of them. Known locally as 'Raggie Aggie' for her business of trading rags and old clothes, the older woman knows the dangers waiting for such a strikingly pretty girl left alone in their rough area of Newcastle, and sees no other option but to take her in. The unlikely pair soon form an unexpectedly strong bond, but there will be obstacles in their paths. Will their friendship survive? Millie Forester's advance through the coming years to the threshold of womanhood is the core of The Rag Maid, as gripping and socially concerned an historical novel as Catherine Cookson has ever written. Her skills of narrative and characterisation provide a spectrum of the good and evil of the Victorian era and frankly confronts the terrible menace of child corruption and be warned, there is depravity and death. This page turner is written from the heart. 427pp, paperback.