The Lass from Laygate

South Shields, 1950.

Twelve-year-old Nell Cradock knows every inch of Laygate: the scrubbed front steps, the coal trains thundering over the Tyne Dock arches, and the Saturday matinee at the Palace. One autumn afternoon there, a Tyne Dock lad called Danny Ferris stops a bully pulling her plait.

But there is one thing Nell doesn't know. She doesn't know why the man she calls Da can never quite look at her, or why her mother turns white whenever anyone mentions Westoe.

As the fifties unfold, Nell grows from a matinee bairn into a young woman with a choice to make. There's the Coronation in the rain and the roar of the crowd at Simonside Hall. There's the circle of the Savoy and the launching ways at Readhead's yard. A secret seventeen years old is waiting behind a gate in Westoe, and Danny has made her a promise on the last day of the Rattler.

Then National Service takes Danny far from the Tyne. Nell must decide what matters more: the life she was born to, or the one she has made.

The Lass from Laygate is a story of family, pride and first love. It is set among the real picture houses, shipyards, pits and terraced streets of a Tyneside town on the edge of change.

Perfect for readers who love heart-warming northern family sagas, post-war nostalgia and a love story worth waiting for.