A new book aims to tell the female side of a historical Glasgow in the 1960s through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old girl.

Maureen Cullen’s first novel 'Kitten Heels' is set in the Clydeside and explores life in a tumultuous time as a teenager in a working-class family.

Based on her home town Dumbarton, Maureen has used her career as a social worker and her years of writing short stories to bring together the life of a teenager called Kathleen Gallagher.

The coming-of-age story follows the protagonist, in a fictional town called Havoc, as she navigates life's ups and downs finding help in some unlikely places.

(Image: Ringwood Publishing)Maureen found her inspiration following her personal fascination surrounding the assassination of American President John F Kennedy in 1963. Having researched the impact this had on life in Scotland and Glasgow, Maureen found the setting for her novel.

She said: “I did a master's degree at Lancaster University in Creative Writing, and I was really interested in short story writing.

“I was very interested in the Kennedy assassination and I remember that it had quite an effect on people here in Scotland. So, I wrote a series of short stories around that time and set them in a fictional town called Havoc.

“I hope readers of this book will find it refreshing and that they identify with the people from the area. It’s a female view of Glasgow which has historical aspects of life at that time.

“The book touches on some serious aspects of life such as mental illness, abuse, alcoholism, unemployment and poverty but I hope I have managed to reflect the humour of the time too.”

The title Kitten Heels was chosen as a metaphor, Maureen says, as it had come from an earlier piece of writing.

She explained: “It was the name of one of my short stories and I chose it because it is a metaphor for growing up: a young girl getting a pair of heels.

“It's really a symbolism of becoming an adult.

“She does get a pair of kitten heels in the book, which becomes quite important to her.”

Maureen worked as a social care worker before publishing her first novelMaureen worked as a social care worker before publishing her first novel (Image: Ringwood Publishing) Her novel journeys through some key landmarks in Glasgow including the Clydeside shipyards, housing estates and schools, which she hopes her readers will recognise.

However, Maureen continuously pays tribute to her ‘home’ of Dumbarton where she lived until she moved down to England for a short time.

When she returned to the area, she did lots of research to help her visual life in the 60s.

She said: “I was five or six when this story is set, so there was actually quite a lot of research that I done.

“I really had to double-check a lot of things that might have been in my memory from being a teenager.

“I was a social worker in West Dunbartonshire for a number of years and then moved to South Cambridgeshire and did social work there.

“I have written some short stories which are related to fostering and adoption issues but the job gave me an insight into life in general.”

Kittens Heels is available for pre-order HERE.

The book will launch at an event at the Helensburgh Community Hub at 2pm on Saturday, October 12.