First US publication of a 1952 novel by the late Dame Catherine-and a good one: Cain and Abel on the Tyneside docks. Young and strapping John O'Brien has a romantic heart and a poetic way, though all that's no use as he looks for work unloading freighters. His mother, Mary Ellen, is pregnant once more, with many mouths to feed already. Devout Catholics, the family is frightened by the Protestant spiritualists who move into the flat above, determined to help the afflicted-and the old man and his granddaughter Christine do somehow save Mary Ellen from a childbirth end, though her newborn dies. Healed, she struggles on against soul-destroying poverty, not helped much by husband Shane, an alcoholic who suffers from tremors. But Shane can still knock down his other son, Dominic, a violent, almost fiendish brute who spends his pay on drink and whores. Meanwhile, good son John adores younger sister Katie, a shy and studious lass, and believes in her dream of becoming a teacher someday-didn't Miss Llewellyn say she could do it? Mary Llewellyn is a teacher herself, a vision of elegance and breeding to this rough lot, the daughter of an erstwhile dockworker who's now a respected boat-builder with his own yard, while her mother, a sharp-tongued social climber, is aghast to see her daughter keep company with John. She's not the only one: Dominic erupts with jealous rage when John becomes a gaffer who hires and oversees the dockworkers. First, Dominic beguiles a simple-minded girl and gets her pregnant, then starts scurrilous rumors that John's the culprit. When he sets Kate and Christine adrift on a boat, all of Tyneside sees the girls drown. Knowing he'll never have his Mary now, John hunts his evil brother from house to house, bent on a terrible revenge. Cookson (The Lady on My Left , p. 1413) bestows an emotional grandeur on the circumscribed lives of her working-class characters, and her vividly written tale has real power.

British readers have been familiar with this early novel by Cookson for five decades, but this reissue will please American fans who crave the late author's sudsy historical novels. John O'Brien, born in the Tyneside area of Northumberland called the "fifteen streets," is caught up in the vicious circle of poverty, drink and deeper poverty endured by the residents of this slum district. He works as a laborer on the docks, trying to add to the family's precarious finances, keep his mother and sisters safe from his drunken father and brutal brother and protect them from the religious violence that often roils the largely Irish Catholic neighborhood. John thinks only sporadically about a better life until a non-Catholic family moves nearby. The kindly Brackens, who preach spiritual healing, are feared and persecuted in the neighborhood, even by John's own family, but they persevere in their message of tolerance and intellectual empowerment, and open John's eyes to a different way of thinking and believing in God. At the same time, John meets his sister's beloved young teacher, Mary Llewellyn, who opens not only his eyes but his heart. Their love affair is scandalous, since Mary is the daughter of a prosperous shipbuilder. Slander, violence and death take their toll before the lovers tentatively plan a new life together. Cookson's strong and touching characterizations and atmospheric setting carry this narrative, which dramatizes the cruel legacies of religious bigotry and the rigid British class system. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved