When Edwin Brown, Katherine Carter's common-law husband, dies without a will, his house and business revert to his womanising brother Gerald. Gerald hints at the conditions under which she might share his roof but it is only when he brutally rapes her that she realises she must take up the only other option open to herself and her twelve-year-old son Joseph, to move to the cheap lodgings in East London offered to her via her friend, housekeeper Dolly. She finds work in a pie-and-eel shop where she begins to enjoy the colourful docklands life - although she still can't shake off Gerald's bullying influence. But she and her son are soon one of a warm-hearted family and Katherine is pulled into the often heartbreaking world of the community, especially when she meets vulnerable young Briony whose family are at the mercy of her drunken father...

'Another very readable book from Dee Williams'
Woman's Weekly

(Paperback, ISBN: 0747255377, £6.99)