Ruth Cotton is well known to many in Newcastle for her huge body of local history work on the multicultural hub of Hamilton. Her Hidden Hamilton blog began as a way for her to find out more about the suburb she was moving to from northern NSW! Hundreds of stories and two books later, Ruth is still just as passionate about her adoptive home.

But Ruth has released a new book, a memoir called A Fragile Hold which details her 1997 diagnosis with multiple sclerosis and the changes to her life from that point. In 2020, just as the pandemic locked us in our homes with huge uncertainty, Ruth’s husband became unwell.