In strictly chapel Pontypridd in 1938, tongues are quick to wag when Alma Moore, abandoned by her lover, is rushed to hospital with stomach pains. The doctor may call it appendicitis, but the scandal-mongers think they know better. And then Bethan John, who's too good for the rest of them since she married a doctor, comes back to her mining family's house with her new baby—but without her husband, or any word of explanation. Ostracized by most—even their own mothers—Alma and Bethan face a lonely struggle to survive. Then taciturn Russian Charlie, an outsider haunted by his own past, reaches out the hand of friendship to them both, and in so doing begins to thaw his own heart.
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.
