Kate Hannigan

The Kate Hannigan novels follow a working-class Tyneside woman and the daughter born from a relationship that respectable society condemns. In the first novel, Kate’s intelligence and determination attract Dr Rodney Prince, but class, religion and Prince’s existing household make any future together precarious.

The sequel moves the emotional conflict into the next generation as Annie Hannigan grows up carrying the consequences of her mother’s choices. Together, the two books examine illegitimacy, education, professional ambition and women’s limited independence in the early twentieth-century North East.