155 x 230mm, 347 pages, Colour printed, Perfect bound, Softcover, 2022

The moving, atmospheric story of an extraordinary woman and her 19th century immigrant family in Scotland, reveals their origins in Famine-ravaged Ireland. The lives and characters of the Quinn family among the woollen mills of Galashiels, the slums and factories of Edinburgh and the tenements of Clydebank around the Singer sewing machine works, come right off the page. Their hand-to-mouth existence and their stubborn independence in the face of poverty are brought vividly back to life. But as a young woman in the 1900s, Bessie Quinn, eighth child of a family in deep trouble, took flight and changed her life. Her journey from Clydebank to an emancipated life in Hampstead Garden Suburb in London, via the Arts and Crafts movement which then thrived in the Lake District, is nothing short of miraculous.

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