[1] Thomson Davis was born in Bathgate, West Lothian, and was three years old when her family moved to Balornock, a district in the city of Glasgow.
[1][2] Brought up in the tenements of Springburn, she had an early ambition to be a writer, and after leaving school she worked at various short-term jobs while submitting her stories to magazines.
[3] In 1972, her first novel, The Breadmakers, was published by Allison and Busby, and was described by the Daily Express as a Glaswegian Coronation Street.
[4] It was followed in 1973 by A Baby Might Be Crying and A Sort of Peace, forming a trilogy known to as The Breadmakers Saga.
[4] As well as her bestselling family sagas and crime thrillers, she also wrote an autobiography, Write from the Heart (2006).