'I warn you, and it is a solemn warning. Leave me, and you - and who ever you run to - will suffer. I have a husband's rights under God's law: "and those whom God has joined together let no man break asunder." ' In Pontypridd and the Rhondda in 1905 coal is king and the families who sunk the first collieries are rich. None is wealthier or more generous a benefactor than Harry Watkin Jones. At 20, Sali Watkin Jones is about to marry her childhood sweetheart, Mansel, a young and successful businessman, in Pontypridd's wedding of the year. But as tragedy follows tragedy, four short and traumatic years later Sali becomes a penniless outcast fleeing from a violent husband and struggling to support herself and her son in a world very different to the one in which she has been brought up. Sali finds work in the home of a family of colliers. Here she and her son find the warmth and love missing from their lives for so long. As the miners' wages are eroded by the greed of the companies that have replaced private owners, unrest and violence come to the valleys. Caught up in the conflict, Sali finds herself denying her roots, her class and even sacrificing her son's future for the sake of the people she loves and the cause they are prepared to die for.
CATRIN COLLIER/KATHERINE JOHN/CARO FRENCH/KATHERINE HARDY -
My most bemused moment. When someone commented, "It will be wonderful for Pontypridd when you die." (Many of my novels are set in the town)
My best "putting in place moment". When someone joined a queue at a signing session in Waterstones and waited ten minutes to say, "I don't want a book, love, but as you're here for two hours, look after my shopping for me." - I did.
My proudest moment, when I discovered my Catrin Collier novel, One Last Summer, based on my Prussian born mother's wartime diaries was named recommended reading for adults by the Holocaust Day Memorial Trust.
My new novel, Bobby's Girl, set in America during in 1968 - the era of the anti-Vietnam War and, Civil Rights movements and student protests will be published in the autumn of 2011.
