DAME Catherine Cookson has provided the inspiration for the latest novel by a successful North-East author.
When Janet MacLeod Trott-er, who lives in Morpeth, Northumberland, was strugg-ling with her first novel, she asked the late Dame Catherine for help.
But failing health prevented the region's best known author from doing so.
Ten years and six books later, Ms MacLeod Trotter has used the life and social conditions experienced by Dame Catherine's grandmother, Rose, as the inspiration for her latest novel, The Jarrow Lass.
She said: "I've always been fascinated by her life story - especially her relationship with her mother and grandmother.
"The Jarrow Lass paints a fictional picture of what life would have been like for someone like Rose living in Jarrow which, in the second half of the 19th Century, resembled a Wild West boom town.
"Rose must have been devastated when one of her daughters, Kate, gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, never guessing she would grow up to be one of the most successful women writers of the 20th Century.
"But despite tragedies of her own, Rose agreed to bring up baby Catherine, who until she was seven years old believed Kate was her sister and not her mother.
"This provided me with more than enough material for one book, so the story of Kate was kept for a sequel, A Child of Jarrow, which I have now completed, and which will be published in the autumn."
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