No life exists outside the times. This is a story about one young woman coming of age, and the place and time that shaped her: the North of England in the 1970s and 80s. About the scorching summer of 1976 - the hottest in England since records began and the last Catherine Taylor would spend with her parents under one roof in their Sheffield home. About the Yorkshire Ripper, the serial killer whose presence haunted Catherine's dreams and childhood years, his malignant power matched only by the aching absence of her own father. About the omnipresent nuclear threat, the women's peace camp at Greenham Common, and the Miners' Strike of the 1980s that sent the body politic into disarray, just as Catherine's own body was invaded by a mysterious and debilitating illness. About the "Second Summer of Love" of 1989, with its heady nights, raves and ecstasy tablets, and the sexual awakening and unplanned pregnancy experienced within it. About a tragic accident, and how Catherine's awareness of the insidious dangers facing women would come to a head as she crossed into to adulthood. The Stirrings is a powerful personal memoir of love and violence, anger and feminism, the thrills and the terrors of youth - all shot through with poetry, risk-taking and humour.