My Beloved Son
A Novel
Description:... Set in Catherine Cookson's native northern English countryside, My Beloved Son is the wonderful, compelling story of a loving family dominated by one woman's suffocating desires. A novel of obsession and the search for true love, My Beloved Son is vintage Cookson. Ironically, it is Ellen Jebeau's love for her son that threatens the family. She had married a man who did little but dream, and then died, leaving her a legacy of debt and a five-year-old son, Joseph. Impoverished and embittered, Ellen becomes determined that young Joseph shall have everything in life that she has missed. Fortunately for Ellen, her late husband had an older brother who is his complete opposite. Strong and optimistic, a wealthy land-owning baronet and lawyer, Sir Arthur Jebeau comes to her aid, installing both mother and son on the family estate. But Sir Arthur is a widower with two young sons, and Ellen knows he will eventually remarry. She fiercely resolves to let nothing stand in the way of what she views as Joseph's "inheritance"--Setting off a series of tragedies that threaten the very existence of the family. Years later, kind, introspective Joseph Jebeau-now a young man ensconced in an army camp on the eve of World War II-tries to emerge from his mother's shadow and live and love on his own terms. But secrets from the past threaten to destroy his happiness with Maggie, a lively young woman at the army camp, as he strives to escape the traumatic heritage of his mother's ruthless ambition and emerge as an independent man--Page 2 and 3 of cover
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