THE SLOW AWAKENING

Catherine Cookson in Marchant guise again, as she confides the tremulous fortunes of poor orphan Kirsten, shunned back in 1850 as the ""evil eye"" because of one wildly wandering peeper. Kirsten, sold to a dreadful tinker by a cruel baby farmer, is happily released when a flood takes the tinker and flops her on the wealthy banks of Knutsson, ""the master,"" where she gives birth to the tinker's child. Then by one of the many coincidences that spangle Cookson's True Story-lets, Knutsson's wife's baby is stillborn, Kirsten's child is substituted, and--barely dried off--Kirsten is a pampered wet nurse. She goes on to gain the love of both the master and a lad across the river between threats on her life and walks in wild weather. But all, including the eye, finally falls into place. A Cookson special--busy as the devil in a gale of wind.