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The Tinker's Girl

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The Tinker's Girl

By: Catherine Cookson
Narrated by: Sophie Roberts
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About this listen

When young Jinnie Howlett’s widowed father, a tinker man, died a pauper, she was already a reluctant inmate of a northern workhouse. But she thought herself fortunate - the alternative might have meant she ended up on the streets.

When close to her 15th birthday and after years of toil and drudgery, she was at last offered a position as a maid-of-all-work. Jinnie’s employers were the Shalemans and her place of work Tollet’s Ridge Farm, a bleakly isolated and run-down sheep farm way out beyond Allendale and towards the Cumbrian border. Before long, she discovered she had exchanged one kind of drudgery for another, this time for the Shaleman family.

Rose, invalid wife of Pug and mother to Bruce and Hal, demanded every hour of the day and night of her. Fortunately Bruce soon recognized that there was more to this seemingly vulnerable girl, and it was he who would defend her against the taunts and harassment of the brutish Pug and Hal.

She became acquainted with Richard Baxton-Powell, who owed his life to Bruce, but when the persistent attention Richard paid her became too obtrusive, she was to understand that her growing confidence and maturity owed more to her life with the Shalemans than to any outside influence. It was then that Jinnie Howlett was suddenly thrust into womanhood, and the path to her own destiny became clear.

©2011 Catherine Cookson (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd
Fiction Romance Women's Fiction
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I have long been a Catherine Cookson fan and this book certainly lived up to all that I enjoy about her style and plots.
The underdog comes good in the face of unlikely circumstances. Though the outcome is positive the plot is not too predictable.
Anyone who enjoys historical novels of struggle and real life with a touch of romance and overcoming the odds thrown in should find this book engaging.

Classic Catherine Cookson

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An enjoyable story that pulled you in and kept you interested. Narration was good and well suited for the story.

A very easy listen

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