The Skylark's Song
Howard, Audrey
A portrayal of a girl from the Mersey docks battling to escape the brutal squalor of her background.

Zoe Taylor is born into poverty and hardship. But her beauty marks her out as someone special, and when local schoolmistress Joanna Dale adopts her, Zoe is given her chance for a new far removed from the violence and squalor of her past. But fate conspires against her, and she is forced back to her old home where her father's violence threatens her yet again. Her only escape is to run away to the wild and rolling moors, and it is there she meets the only man she will ever love, a man for ever out of reach....