You're a loser; you were born a loser.' Was that the whole truth about Charlie MacFell? Was he just the kind of nice chap who always takes the dirty end of the stick, lacking the inner strength to take a firm stand in life or love alike? In one of the most powerful and distinctive novels that this author has written, Catherine Cookson brilliantly portrays a man in search of himself and tells a story of exceptional dramatic force which carries the reader from the rural Northumberland of Edwardian times into the holocaust of the Western Front in the First World War. And at the root of the matter is the cinder path of Charlie's boyhood home; a place of harsh associations that would come to symbolise the struggle with destiny itself. 'No fan should be without it' Good Book Guide.