A NORTH-East author drew on personal experience of growing up in the Durham coalfield for her new novel.

Elizabeth Hankin, who writes under the name Elizabeth Gill, recalled her childhood in Tow Law, County Durham, where her father owned Bonds Foundry steelworks, to pen Miss Appleby’s Academy.

The book, Mrs Hankin’s 42nd published work, is set at the turn of the last century and tells the story of Emma Appleby, who flees an unwanted suitor in New England USA, to return to Tow Law, where her father was born.

A single middle class woman with a child in tow, she is viewed with suspicion – especially when she sets up an academy which competes with the local school.

Mrs Hankin, who lives in North End, Durham City, has been a full-time writer for more than 30 years.

Miss Appleby’s Academy, which she wrote during 2011, is her first book with her new publisher, Quercus.

The 62-year-old said: “I was thinking about writing about education. I went to school in the US for a year when I was 17. One of my friends suggested I write something about America.

“So we have this American woman from New England coming back to Tow Law.

“I then visited an exhibition in Tow Law and there had been a Dame School there in 1900.”

The novel is entirely fictional but Mrs Hankin said: “It felt like it was written for me.”

Miss Appleby’s Academy, published by Quercus, is available now in paperback, priced £6.99, and ebook. For more information, visit quercusbooks.co.uk