Matty is fifteen and is leaving school in a few weeks' time. He wants to work with animals, and would like to get a job on a farm. But his parents say he's too young to leave home - he must stay in the town and get a job in ship-building, like his father. They also say he can't go on a camping holiday with his friends. And they say he can't keep his dog, Nelson, because Nelson barks all day and eats his father's shoes. But it is because of Nelson that Matty finds a new life ...
For seventeen-year-old Brid Stevens the day began at four o''clock on a summer morning, when her alarm clock roused her from a dream-filled sleep. She had an appointment to keep with Joe Lloyd, whom she had met at the weekly dance. On the cliff-top at Stockwell Hill, overlooking the sea, they were to watch the sun come up. What was to occur after that was to bring a day of such promise to a tragic end. The events of this powerful novel, set on the Northumbrian coast in the 1960s, take place over one day, a period during which everyone involved discovers that the consequences of an innocent meeting between two young people are far more significant than the event itself. The Bonny Dawn is a remarkable tour de force by Britain''s most popular novelist.
