The Unbaited Trap

Description

John Emmerson was a lonely man. He had a wife, a son, friends, but he was isolated from all the people and events about him by the tragedy of his past. Then he met Cissie, and for the first time his loneliness eased a little. Cissie was everything his wife Ann was not. She was warm, and compassionate, and generous. And she was quick to sense the needs of a desolate, unhappy man. But Cissie was also a young widow- poor, and with a young son to support. And John Emmerson was one of the town's leading solicitors - a man of importance whose every move was watched by the local dignitaries . . .

Catherine Cookson was born in Tyne Dock, the illegitimate daughter of a poverty-stricken woman, Kate, whom she believed to be her older sister. She began work in service but eventually moved south to Hastings, where she met and married Tom Cookson, a local grammar-school master. Although she was originally acclaimed as a regional writer - her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award for the best regional novel of 1968 - her readership quickly spread throughout the world, and her many best-selling novels established her as one of the most popular of contemporary women novelists. After receiving an OBE in 1985, Catherine Cookson was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She was appointed an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1997. For many years she lived near Newcastle upon Tyne. She died shortly before her ninety-second birthday, in June 1998.