Catherine Cookson's Hamilton novels have taken their place among the most widely acclaimed and enjoyed of her books. In this omnibus edition of Hamilton and Goodbye Hamilton, she shows her exceptional ability to tell a story in which good humor and a sense of compassion are finely blended, with characters so vividly alive they leap off the page. Maisie could never be quite sure when she first met Hamilton, but most likely it was when she started talking to herself as a lonely seven-year-old. She didn't know his name until much later,when she was fourteen and Dr. Kane had to pay her a visit. "Let us use our horse sense," he said, and at that moment Maisie saw a great horse galloping past him and all the time looking at her, its eyes full of knowledge and its lips drawn back as if in laughter.
