The Slow Awakening

In the mid-1850's life for an orphan was grim, as Kirsten MacGregor discovered when her parents died suddenly, leaving her penniless and alone in the hands of a cruel baby farmer.
Somehow, Kirsten survived her terrible childhood - only to be sold, at the age of fourteen, to a travelling tinker - a vicious master who raped her and held her captive until the fateful day they were separated during a storm. Rescued from the flood by the Flynn family, she gave birth to a child - at the same time Florence, mistress of the great house nearby, was told her newborn son was dead. The two women entered into a secret bargain, an arrangement that was to change Kirsten's fortune - and place her in the middle of a bitter feud between two families.
The Slow Awakening is a powerful novel, originally published under the pseudonym of Catherine Marchant, by Catherine Cookson, whose many bestselling novels established her as the, best-loved of contemporary women writers.