By Catherine Cookson.. London Corgi Books 1978 . 271 p. , The cinder path which led from the Northumberland farmhouse would always symbolise defeat for Catherine MacFell; the boyhood humiliation from his brutal father, and the weaknesses that made Charlie a born loser - a nice chap who always got the thick end of the stick. But when the First World War swept him into the holocaust of the Western Front, a new Charlie emerged - a man in search of inner strength and integrity, with a woman stand by him... f. f.. 0-552-11160-0