Lesbian Fiction

In 1828, two young women were torn apart as they were sentenced to transportation to Botany Bay. Will they ever meet again?

Book Information

Book Title: The Low Road
Author: Katharine Quarmby
Publication Date: UK: 22nd June 2023. US: 19^th September 2023. Australia/NZ: 2nd January 2024
Publisher: Unbound Publishing
Page Length: 400
Genre: Historical Fiction / Lesbian Fiction / Women’s Literature

Blurb:

Norfolk, 1813. In the quiet Waveney Valley, the body of a woman – Mary Tyrell – is staked through the heart after her death by suicide. She had been under arrest for the suspected murder of her newborn child. Mary leaves behind a young daughter, Hannah, who is later sent away to the Refuge for the Destitute in London, where she will be trained for a life of domestic service.

It is at the Refuge that Hannah meets Annie Simpkins, a fellow resident, and together they forge a friendship that deepens into passionate love. But the strength of this bond is put to the test when the girls are caught stealing from the Refuge’s laundry, and they are sentenced to transportation to Botany Bay, setting them on separate paths that may never cross again.

Drawing on real events, The Low Road is a gripping, atmospheric tale that brings to life the forgotten voices of the past – convicts, servants, the rural poor – as well as a moving evocation of love that blossomed in the face of prejudice and ill fortune.

Excerpt

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
We sail into Sydney Cove on a fine autumn May morning. The world turned upside down, right enough. As we near the quay other boats slide alongside, and there are men in them who look us up and down with hunger in their eyes, although they remain silent and the captain looks down at them with venom.

From deck I wonder if I am dreaming to see these miles and miles of sand and wooded shore and then we are in safe harbour. I look out, and find I am clutching at Jennet and Grace.

The streets are uneven, but the houses have gardens and I can see vegetables and fruit growing in them, and chickens and pigs grubbing for food inside wooden pens. I see a quantity of butchered beasts lying outside a great shop and the men with cleavers and bloody aprons. I look away. The houses are made of stone mostly but there are also huts, higher up where the roads run out between the rocks. There are stores too, and women working in the yards. Others gather water from the public well, or shop, or are even bathing. There is order, but also chaos, for “the streets are crooked and unlevel, and the throng immense. Houses perch on the slopes.

We are disembarked and then together we are helped up and onto land. Everything is swaying. We hold onto each other, form a circle of eight as our luggage is heaped up by us. I smell the sea, blood, spices that tickle the nose. London but not London, something else, somewhere else.

The captain comes towards us with papers in his hands. “Jennet will go to the work factory, Grace too. You have farming experience, Hannah?”

“Yes, as a child.”

“Wait here.”

He gestures for everyone to step aside, except me, but for a moment we huddle together and embrace. We promise to find each other, though how will we do it without addresses? But I tell them, desperately, “I will find you, somehow.”

The captain speaks then, seeing our faces. “The newspapers here are full of articles, the names of those assigned often appear in them. It is quite possible to trace somebody, or even place a notice that you are seeking them.” I wonder how we will ever pay for such a thing, but it is a sliver of hope.

Then the captain tells them that they must go to the factory and I feel their arms around me, one last time. We have loved each other on this journey and now Grace and Jennet pick up their bundles, their crates are loaded onto a boat and I watch as they embark and are rowed away, upriver, the vision blurs before me and I cannot see them any more. I am completely alone now.

The captain taps me on the shoulder. “You can milk, you said?” I rub at my eyes with my sleeve. The ground stills at last.

Beside him is a tall man, perhaps in his thirties, brown-skinned and with light blue eyes. He carries a leather hat in one hand, a bag in the other.

“I grew up in service, on a farm in the county of Norfolk.” I hesitate. “I was born on one, sir, in the east of England. I lived on a farm with my mama, until she died when I was still a child. I used to milk the cows and perform other tasks.” Not all of the truth, but enough.

“And could you nurse a little, when I cannot, when I am out, working?” He adds but his voice is jerky, “My wife is ailing.”

“Yes, sir. I nursed my mistress. With my mother, as I was just a child.” The truth again, measured out. I see the farmer’s wife, the spills of opium, and how small her coffin had been, how light. I can bear this.

He turns to the captain, and together they walk over to a table, sign some paperwork and thus I am assigned to work as a servant to Frank Emerson, farmer. I sign my name, and he tells me, “We are sailing to Newcastle, north from here, and then on by river. But first we will eat.”

He leads me through the streets and as I look around me, I wonder how it can be that so much is familiar, and yet I am on the other side of the world.”

Excerpt from
he Low Road
Katharine Quarmby
This material is protected by copyright.

Buy Links:

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/mg5RAD

Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-low-road-katharine-quarmby/7418138?ean=9781800182394

Author Bio:

Katharine Quarmby has written non-fiction, short stories and books for children and her debut novel, The Low Road, is published by Unbound in 2023. Her non-fiction works include Scapegoat: Why We Are Failing Disabled People (Portobello Books, 2011) and No Place to Call Home: Inside the Real Lives of Gypsies and Travellers (Oneworld, 2013). She has also written picture books and shorter e-books.

She is an investigative journalist and editor, with particular interests in disability, the environment, race and ethnicity, and the care system. Her reporting has appeared in outlets including the Guardian, The Economist, The Atlantic, The Times of London, the Telegraph, New Statesman and The Spectator. Katharine lives in London.

Katharine also works as an editor for investigative journalism outlets, including Investigative Reporting Denmark and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Author Links:

Website: https://www.katharinequarmby.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KatharineQ

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katharinequarmbywriter/

LinkedIn: Katharine Quarmby – Writer, Journalist, Editor – Self-employed | LinkedIn

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katharinequarmby_/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Katharine-Quarmby/author/B004GH8LS6

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2082356.Katharine_Quarmby

MY REVIEW:

This book is a breath of fresh air for all of us over sixty. I could not put it down. Having lived through the Women’s Lib of the 60s and Consciousness Raising of the 70s, I was impressed with the realistic portrayal of that era – and chagrined yet again over how long it took for our culture to move from there to inclusiveness and acceptance for the LGBTQ community (a battle we are obviously still fighting).

If I had to identify two main themes that stood out to me, they would be fidelity and authenticity. Now in their late sixties, the two main characters first fell in love with each other in their early twenties, in 1972. By then Christina already identified as lesbian, but Robyn Elizabeth had never considered that there might be any other option than to fall in love with a man. I appreciated the authors’ authentic description of her inner struggle to accept her feelings and finally act on them in that era. In 2023, readers who are younger may write off Robyn Elizabeth as an undeserving wimp when she ultimately turns tail and runs, abandoning Christina. I fully understood her.

The dual timeline novel gives us a window into their 1972 experience, then drops us into a chance meeting 46 years later, in 2018, on a golf course in Palm Springs. As a sidebar, I love Palm Springs and thoroughly enjoyed it vicariously through the characters’ eyes.

Christina’s wife has died of cancer, in 2016, and Robyn Elizabeth is in a stable 40+ year marriage that is relatively comfortable but lacking passion. We are allowed to experience the inner world of both characters as they journey toward what many might think an impossibility – a late-in-life happy ending.

Christina is deeply afraid of being hurt again, as she was by the abrupt break-up in 1972. Robyn Elizabeth must once more examine her feelings and become faithful – not to a marriage that is already broken, but to her authentic self. Even knowing that all romance novels have a happy outcome, I was pulled into their experience and found myself struggling to envision how it all could ever work out. And that is what kept the pages turning.