Sue Hepworth's poignant reminiscences, above, of the first man she loved will resonate with every daughter who has no-one to buy a Father's Day card for this Sunday.

The loss of your father can take the feet from under a woman. The rock you always knew you could lean on, the strong arms that could lift you up for all those years... how can they ever be replaced?

The truth is they can't be; you're a child no longer.

A partner is there to share the good and the bad, not protect and guide you through.

But many fatherless women come through their grief to find a new strength in themselves.

Bakewell novelist Sue went through the death of her father six years ago and has used much of her emotions from that time in her second book, Zuzu's Petals. The novel deals with the impact of a father's death on its heroine and her relationships with the men in her life.

Says Sue: "My father's death made me reassess my whole life and I hadn't expected that. My dad had become a difficult character in old age. He was deaf, and in pain and crotchety. I thought I would be able to deal with his leaving.

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"But in the event, I was completely overwhelmed by how big a thing it was to lose a parent," she says.

Sue still thinks about him daily. Even though she is a woman of 58, with three adult children, she still feels swept away by the fact that one of her parents is dead.

"I felt incredulous that people should be expected to go through something as painful as bereavement. If I felt like this about my father's death, how would I feel when my husband died?" she says.

A former psychologist with Manpower Services in Sheffield, Sue channelled her thoughts, hopes and fears into the journal she had started to keep when she decided she wanted to become an author.

She was following in dad's footsteps. He was Wensleydale writer Fred Willis, a well-read columnist in a national farming magazine.

"Unwittingly, it became my bereavement journal," says Sue. "I wrote about his illness and his death and my feelings for a year afterwards. Most of the time, I felt like I was a foreign correspondent, sending back bulletins from this foreign land called bereavement."

Her father never got to see one of her proudest achievements – her first novel in 2006. Plotting for Beginners was co-written with Jane Linfoot, a friend she made on a creative writing course. The gentle romantic comedy sold well.

But ideas for a second novel didn't come easy.

She wanted to use the raw emotions and deeply considered thoughts from her bereavement journal, but didn't want the piece to become a work of fiction.

"It was my father's life and death; it was real," she says. "I wrote a serious piece I felt might help other people through bereavement and sent it off to publishers. The rejection letters said it was honest and powerful, but wouldn't sell," she recalls.

As the years passed and her feelings mellowed, she realised a novel based on her experiences could be written in a way in which her father would have approved.

Her new novel, Zuzu's Petals, is named after a touching scene focusing on the bond between father and daughter in the legendary film, It's A Beautiful Life.

Warm, funny and romantic, it is set in Sheffield and Wensleydale and features a forty-something character who goes through the death of her elderly father.

"Although it is comedic, the heart of it is serious and deals realistically with the death of a parent and the impact it has on relationships," says Sue. "This book wouldn't be here without my father's death. Losing him got me to where I am now."

Zuzu's Petals was published in hardback by Snowbooks this month and is out in paperback on July 3.
Read Sue's tribute to her father: see next page.