The story of Molly O'Dowd from the cotton mills. Molly must make her own way in an unforgiving world, yet dares to reach for happiness in spite of everything.

Audrey Howard was born in Liverpool in 1929. Before she began to write she had a variety of jobs, among them hairdresser, model, shop assistant, cleaner and civil servant. In 1981 she wrote the first of her novels when she was out of work and living in Australia. There are now more than twenty, and her fourth, The Juniper Bush, won the Boots Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 1988. She now divides her time between her childhood home, St Anne's on Sea, Lancashire, and a home in the Yorkshire Dales.