Lost girls, lost men and lost dreams!
The House on Boundary Street by Tea Cooper
It's 1923 Sydney. With her brother killed in the war, her father now dead, and lack of a job has Dolly Bowman leaves her small town home of Wollombi and heads for Sydney. She's lined up new employment as a maid at a boarding house, 54 Boundary Street. What Dolly doesn't know is that she's taking employment in a high class brothel where the step up from maid to whore is a forgone conclusion.
Her brother's best mate Jack Dalton hasn't been back to their hometown ever. Imagine his shocked surprise when Dolly, also a childhood friend turns up at Boundary Street and after a few shocks becomes the new singer in the club he part owns. Surprises all around, and how Dolly avoids the oldest profession in the world is another tale.
Then there's the problem of the cocaine trade in Sydney. Not that Boundary Street has anything to do with that.
A story with quite a few twists and turns about a time in Australia's history when cocaine was 'flooding Sydney with cocaine. Australia’s [had] the highest use in the world. It’s [wasn't] illegal to use it ... but [was] illegal to sell it, supply it.'
(The back story of course is that this is a time when the male population of small towns throughout Australia were decimated by the World War 1. A whole generation wiped out. The young men who never returned. Go to any Australian town, no matter the size and you'll see memorials to the fallen listing swathes of young men, often from the same families, who'd fallen in far off places. Add to that the injured who returned, including those who'd become addicted to cocaine after treatment in hospital and never regained themselves. With rife unemployment and the effect of the flu epidemic that savaged its way across the world, these were grim times. Ring any bells?)
I must admit that I found myself annoyed time and again with Dolly. She's just a bit too headstrong to the point of dangerous. She doesn't pick up on the clues around her that all is not as it should be. Is that because she's a country gal and has no street smarts? And Jack is supposedly shrewd but he's somewhat lackadaisical in many ways.
The two I enjoyed most are the secondary characters, Ted and Cynthia. They stole the show for me and took my original 3 star rating to 4 stars.
I was able to fully appreciate the dark places portrayed, and was buoyed by the light of the human spirit amongst even the most forlorn. Friendship, the sticking together, can be found in unexpected places.
An Escape Publishing ARC via NetGalley
****
Her brother's best mate Jack Dalton hasn't been back to their hometown ever. Imagine his shocked surprise when Dolly, also a childhood friend turns up at Boundary Street and after a few shocks becomes the new singer in the club he part owns. Surprises all around, and how Dolly avoids the oldest profession in the world is another tale.
Then there's the problem of the cocaine trade in Sydney. Not that Boundary Street has anything to do with that.
A story with quite a few twists and turns about a time in Australia's history when cocaine was 'flooding Sydney with cocaine. Australia’s [had] the highest use in the world. It’s [wasn't] illegal to use it ... but [was] illegal to sell it, supply it.'
(The back story of course is that this is a time when the male population of small towns throughout Australia were decimated by the World War 1. A whole generation wiped out. The young men who never returned. Go to any Australian town, no matter the size and you'll see memorials to the fallen listing swathes of young men, often from the same families, who'd fallen in far off places. Add to that the injured who returned, including those who'd become addicted to cocaine after treatment in hospital and never regained themselves. With rife unemployment and the effect of the flu epidemic that savaged its way across the world, these were grim times. Ring any bells?)
I must admit that I found myself annoyed time and again with Dolly. She's just a bit too headstrong to the point of dangerous. She doesn't pick up on the clues around her that all is not as it should be. Is that because she's a country gal and has no street smarts? And Jack is supposedly shrewd but he's somewhat lackadaisical in many ways.
The two I enjoyed most are the secondary characters, Ted and Cynthia. They stole the show for me and took my original 3 star rating to 4 stars.
I was able to fully appreciate the dark places portrayed, and was buoyed by the light of the human spirit amongst even the most forlorn. Friendship, the sticking together, can be found in unexpected places.
An Escape Publishing ARC via NetGalley
****
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