Orphaned at a tender age, Millie Forester is adopted by "Raggie Aggie" Winkowski, and she suffers misfortune and misplaced love as she grows to adulthood side by side with Aggie's son, Ben, whose love for Millie increases over the years. Another fairy tale for grown-ups fond of Victorian waif-to- well-being tales featuring the deserving poor and plain, the beautiful, rich, and wicked, and other lurking ogres. This time out, the ever popular Cookson (My Beloved Son; The Love Child, etc.) offers the saga of a wee lass headed for trouble--all beginning in an 1854 English mill village. Millie Forester, first seen here at seven when her poor mother is forced to streetwalk for food, finds a reluctant protector in Agnes Winkowski, aka ``Raggie Aggie,'' a Tugboat Annie type who peddles rags from the remains of the old family farmhouse, which also shelters Ben, 17, taken in when he was a small lad. Millie's Ma commits suicide, and a brothel owner is after the beautiful child, so it's off to a convent school--an education finished when Millie kicks a virulent nun in the shins. Then when Millie is 16, she's happily working as a nursemaid nearby--until at a servants' party, the wife of a mill owner directs some terrible sexual antics. So it's home again and a rich suitor--in spite of the objections of sturdy and saintly Ben, possessor of all the manly virtues if physically a bit short. Two monster men will then rustle the grass--a long-lost father and that old devil brothel procurer- -but there's that Cookson specialty on the way: the last-minute rescue. With dialogue ripe and rugged: a grand groaner for the faithful. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Catherine Cookson lived in Northumberland, England, the setting of many of her international bestsellers. Born in Tyne Dock, she was the illegitimate daughter of an impoverished woman, Kate, whom she was raised to believe was her older sister. She began to work in the civil service but eventually moved south to Hastings, where she met and married a local grammar school master. Although she was originally acclaimed as a regional writer, in 1968 her novel The Round Tower won the Winifred Holtby Award, her readership quickly spread worldwide, and her many bestselling novels established her as one of the most popular contemporary authors. After receiving an OBE in 1985, Catherine Cookson was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1993. She died shortly before her ninety-second birthday, in June 1998, having completed 104 works.