Down Weavers Lane [Paperback]

'Catherine Cookson fans will cheer!' (Peterborough Evening Telegraph on Our Polly )

'Industrial Lancashire in the 1830s with the daughter of a prostitute determined to avoid her mother's plight' (The Bookseller - Paperback Preview )

'Brilliant, no one can match her writing ability . . . I have just finished reading it, couldn't put it down, it held me absorbed on every page.' (Amazon reader on Lancashire Lass )

'Industrial Lancashire in the 1830s with the daughter of a prostitute determined to avoid her mother's plight'

'Catherine Cookson fans will cheer!'

Emmy Carter's mother is a prostitute - and her life has made Emmy determined to avoid the same fate. But Emmy is beautiful, so attracts unwanted attention; her mother's protector has his eye on her, as does evil Marcus Armistead, her employer's nephew. Marcus is excited by Emmy's virginity and has her kidnapped, but Emmy hits him over the head and escapes. Marcus, futher enraged, kills her mother and becomes even more determined to rape Emmy, but the combined efforts of the local parson and Emmy's young suitor manage to keep her safe from harm. Finally Emmy sees Marcus get his just desserts, finds out who her father was, and attains the respectability she has so longed for.

I wanted to write about people whose lives are shadowed by the past - and my first title for this book was 'The Shadowed Path'. But then so much of the story took place in Weavers Lane, that I had to change the title.

I've always loved looking at weavers' cottages in Lancashire, stone-built, three storeys high, with a row of windows along the top floor to bring light in for the handloom weavers. But when this story takes place, the day of the handloom weaver is almost over, the last sporadic outbreaks of machine-breaking are disturbing the peace, but steam engines, cotton mills and railways are the way of the future.

Emmy, the heroine, has had a hard life. Her mother is a prostitute and is like a butterfly, fluttering here and there, with money running through her fingers all too easily. But Emmy desperately wants respectability, and resists attempts by her mother's protector to take advantage of her beauty. And when a rich man tries to buy her, she fights him as well.

She and Jack have so much in common - including the fact that neither feels able to marry. He has his mother and siblings to support. She won't bring her mother's shame to any man. But that doesn't stop them falling in love. Doesn't stop Jack from rescuing Emmy when the rich man tries to kidnap her. Doesn't stop her turning to him for comfort - and doesn't stop fate bringing them together.

Nigel Chamberlain has done another of his beautiful covers and the picture of Emmy is so like I imagined her, I'm amazed every time I look at it. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Anna Jacobs grew up in Lancashire and emigrated to Australia in 1973, but loves to return to England regularly to visit her family and soak up the history. She has two grown-up daughters and now lives with her husband in a spacious waterfront home. Often as she writes, dolphins frolic outside the window of her study. Inside, the house is crammed with thousands of books.

Hands stuffed into his pockets, Jack Staley watched his father Jem and brother Tom black their faces with soot from the chimney and listened to them joking with one another. He felt so furious at the way they were risking their lives that the words he'd been holding back burst out. `They'll be waiting for you!'
Big Jem Staley grinned at his second son. `They won't, you know. We've planned it all out careful-like. They've only got one watchman at Rishmore's tonight because th'other 'un fell ill.' He winked. `Suffering from a severe case of knock on the head. Old Phil won't give us no trouble. We s'll smash up them damned new weaving machines afore they can bring in the military.' He cocked his head on one side. `Sure tha doesn't want to come wi' us, lad?'
`Aye, very sure, Dad. I don't agree with what you're doing.'
Big Jem's expression darkened. `I should make thi come. I'm 'shamed to see a son o' mine holding back when there's summat important to be done.'
`You couldn't force me,' Jack said simply, folding his arms and staring challengingly at him. `I'm near as big as you two now an' I'd kick up a right old fuss. You couldn't keep what you're doing secret with me yelling an' struggling all down the street.'
Tom broke the tension, as he usually did. `An' you're twice as stubborn as we are, too.' He laughed, cuffing Jack affectionately about the ear. `Leave him be, Dad. He allus was an old sobersides.'
But a sob from his mother made Jack grab his father's arm and beg once again, `Don't do it, Dad! Look how you're upsetting our Mam.'
Jem glanced towards his weeping wife, a guilty yet stubborn look, then shook his head. `She's allus gettin' upset about summat. Any road, I can't let th'other lads down. Not now. Nor I don't want to.'
Jack kicked the toe of his shoe against the table leg in a rhythm that emphasised his words. `You're wrong about all this, Dad. Wrong! Violence won't get you anywhere an' it won't stop the Rishmores from using them power looms, neither. It won't!' To his mind you had to be stupid as well as dishonest to steal or damage the property of other people, especially ones as rich and powerful as the Rishmores who had just taken delivery of some new power looms at the mill. The handloom weavers like his dad were up in arms about it, but you couldn't stop progress or prevent the rich from doing as they pleased. Look how old Mr Rishmore ordered folk around at work, even his own son, and dismissed them on the spot if they didn't do exactly as he said.
Jem shrugged and wrapped a muffler round his neck to hide the lower half of his face. `Suit thysen, lad. But don't come crying to me when they throw thi out of work because a damned metal monster has taken thy place in t'mill. All I can get now is damned checked cloth to weave, an' me a skilled weaver an' all. Things'll get worse if we don't do summat, mark my words. If women can work them new machines, why should they take men on at all when it costs 'em twice as much in wages? Who'll be the breadwinners then? Women, that's who. It's unnatural, that's what it is, an' we won't stand for it!' He went across to give his wife a quick, bracing hug. `Don't wait up for me, Netta love.'
He said that quite often, Jack thought, though it was usually because he was going out to the alehouse for a wet with the lads.
She flung her arms round her husband's waist, begging, `Don't go, Jem! Think of the childer, if you won't think of me.'
He pushed her roughly away. `I am thinking of them childer. Six on 'em we've raised, Netta Staley, an' what for? To see 'em go hungry, that's what. To see our Jack take a job in that damned mill like a slavey, 'stead of getting his own loom upstairs here. We have to show Rishmore we shan't put up with it an' force him to stop buying them damned machines.'
His anger made Netta sink down on her chair and close her eyes, but tears still trickled down her cheeks. `They'll call out the soldiers on you,' she said in a dull voice. `Mr Rishmore threatened it an' he'll do it too. You'll be shot and killed like my uncle was at Peterloo. It's not ten year since that happened an' it'll happen again. An' I'll never forgive you for dragging our Tom into it. Never.'
`He didn't have to drag me, Mam,' Tom said gently. `I happen to agree with him.'
She looked at him, all her love for her handsome first-born showing in her face. `Then you're as daft as he is, lad. What shall me and the kids do if owt happens to you two?'
`Ah, nowt's going to happen to us. We can allus run away if there's trouble, can't we?'
`Right, then, are thi ready, Tom lad?' Jem crammed his old felt hat down over his eyes and turned to leave, stopping briefly to call to Jack, `Keep that door latch on, son. I don't want anyone comin' in an' seein' we're not home.'