Dollybird

Anne Lazurko

Description

Housekeeper—or whore?

Twenty-year-old Moira, the daughter of a Newfoundland doctor, dreams of becoming a doctor herself; but when she becomes pregnant out of wedlock, she is banished to the bleak landscape of southern Saskatchewan in 1906. There, she must come to terms with her predicament, her pioneer environment, and her employment as a “dollybird,” a term applied to women who might be housekeepers, whores—or both. 

 A saga of birth, death, and the violent potential of both men and the elements, Dollybird explores the small mercies that mean more than they should under a vast prairie sky that waits, not so quietly, for people to fail.

Winner of the Willa Award for Historical Fiction

Saskatchewan Book Award Finalist

Sujets

• Literary
• Historical
• Westerns
• Literature
• General officer
• Western (genre)
• History of Canada
• Historical fiction
• General
• Fiction
• Western

Informations

• Publié par: Shadowpaw Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781989398593
• Langue: English

Extrait

PRAISE FOR DOLLYBIRD



“An absolutely stunning novel that I hope gets some notice. I’ve reviewed some 4,000 books for The Sun-Times in the past 20 years; only a few times did something new to me like this one. Dollybird . Very nice.”
ANDREW ARMITAGE, BOOK EDITOR FOR THE SUN-TIMES


“ Dollybird is a page-turner. Every character is fully realized, crippled by pains specific and universal. The writing is shot through with poetry, even the landscape is rendered harsh and graceful in the same moment . . . Such a cast of characters—everyone steps off the page, even those we only catch a glimpse of . . . Dollybird covered me in dust and mud; the pages are intoned with every kind of love: the absent, the lost, the yearning, the found. Read  Dollybird. ”
KATHERINE LAWRENCE, AWARD WINNING WRITER AND POET


“ Dollybird explores human relationships: parents and children, men and women, siblings and female friends, and how these connections are further complicated in the face of an indifferent, unpredictable natural environment . . . Lazurko’s straightforward prose transports the reader to early 20th-century Canada . . . Hers is an unidealized portrayal of life at that time, as known to the working poor, the disenfranchised, and the sickly. Her characters are well-developed, flawed, and frightened.  Dollybird , like all good novels, and life itself, leaves much to ponder and question. It does reassure us, however, that placing ourselves in a new location does not necessarily mean that we have left old attitudes and beliefs behind.”
LAURIE GLENN NORRIS, THE TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL


“The novel’s strength lies in its glimpses into not only the hardship but also the tight sense of community that marked pioneering men and women . . . Lazurko’s title speaks to the confining roles women were permitted to have as the West was  ‘settled’ and to the difficulties women faced when they, like Moira, tried to resist them.”
THE COASTAL SPECTATOR

DOLLYBIRD


Published by
Shadowpaw Press
Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
www. shadowpawpress.com


Second edition, February 2023
First edition published 2013 by Coteau Books


Copyright © 2013 by Anne Lazurko
All rights reserved


All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.


No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.


Print ISBN: 978-1-989398-58-6
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-989398-59-3


Originally edited by Sandra Birdsell
This edition edited by Edward Willett
Cover designed by Tania Craan
CONTENTS




Part One
Dust


Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen


Part Two
Air and Light


Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty


Part Three
Moments of Grace


Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six


Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also from Shadowpaw Press
For
Diana Worman
who chooses to find joy
PART ONE
DUST
CHAPTER ONE
MOIRA



Crowds of young men milled about the Halifax train station, kissing teary-eyed girlfriends and ducking hugs from worried mothers. I watched the scramble of limbs and luggage and listened to the boisterous talk from a perch on top of my overstuffed suitcase. Some of the men glanced my way, then quickly away again. I’m sure they wondered what I was doing there, how I fit in. But I didn’t. They were heading west for jobs and excitement. I was heading west because I was pregnant, because my mother insisted I spend nine months of purgatory in Moose Jaw. In Saskatchewan.
It was a Canadian province, so new I’d had to investigate where it was and how to spell its name. I’m sure Mother chose Saskatchewan because it was such a ridiculously long distance from St. John’s; my situation was guaranteed to be hidden from the judgment of her privileged friends. Maybe she hoped to be rid of me altogether, to cut me off from my father, from my future. But while I was scared to death at the prospect of a baby and the unknown prairie, I would survive, and I would be back; I wouldn’t give my mother the satisfaction of doing otherwise. The thought buoyed me, and I was suddenly caught up in the excitement I saw in the eyes of the fishermen’s boys who climbed the steps of the train with me. The harvest train. A chance to reap. A chance at something better. More than the sea could offer them in 1906. More than my mother could offer me.
I wasn’t entirely alone, though Mother’s choice of Cousin Fred as my companion seemed ironic, if not spiteful. Fred had been in trouble since I could remember—at school, during catechism, in church. But Mother forgave him his excesses in light of mine, saying he was obviously more responsible than I. Fred had met Father and me outside the train station, where my care and my money were handed over as Mother had instructed.
There was no fanfare to my leaving, no emotional goodbyes. Father looked to the distance and pretended not to notice when I hung my head over the rail on the ferry crossing from St. John’s. The nausea was bad, but when he left me with Fred, the disappointment in his face and his quick, cold embrace were worse. I was already a stranger to him. He’d been so certain of my future as a doctor, one of the first female physicians on the Rock. Now he had to relinquish that idea to a new truth: I would leave a bastard baby in far-off Saskatchewan.
On the train, Fred guided me to a berth and set my suitcase on the narrow shelf under the bed. I put my black doctor’s bag by the pillow where I could see it. His eyes darted about, and he rolled his new bowler hat in his hands, anxious to be rid of me.
“Stay out of trouble,” I called after him. He chuckled as he swayed down the aisle and away.
I lay back against the pillow, exhausted. Out the window were forest and rock, any sign of the sea left behind. I felt claustrophobic: like the trees were keeping guard, foot soldiers for my mother. When I woke, the light outside was grey. My sick stomach had settled down, and I went to find the dining car. Most of the tables were filled with young men, their voices loud, excited hoots of phony laughter punching the air. Their hands fidgeted, shoulders tensing at each outburst. They had their fears too.
I hoped Fred might make an appearance and sat at a table for two against the wall. At the next one over, a heavy woman sat bouncing a small baby on her lap. I imagined she was off to visit relatives and would arrive to welcoming arms and hugs for the new grandchild she brought. There’d be no shame, her baby unremarkable to anyone but her own family, free of the labels they might use for mine.
The men stopped talking for a moment to look suspiciously at another man, who showed up with a small child in his arms. They avoided meeting his eyes. I suppose they were expecting to have a good time before the months of work ahead, and a little one didn’t fit into their plans.
The father was barely a boy himself, yet he seemed beaten, dark with the Irish in him, his face pounded to leather by the East Coast gales that weather them all. A wild black beard sprouted round his face, and his coveralls were patched on the knees and backside. Dirty socks poked through holes in the toes of his boots. His son’s wardrobe was no better. The boy was a bundle of grey rags held together here and there by a stitch or a pin. My heart dropped for the child.
None of the other men asked the young father to join them, so he pulled out a chair at the table where the woman sat with her child. He smiled slightly at her and nodded, but the woman stood, stuck her nose in the air, and looked for another seat. He yawned, grinned at his son, and stretched his long legs out under the table, catching my eye and holding it. I looked away first.
I gave up on Fred and ordered soup and a biscuit. The men were quiet again, if for different reasons, as two pretty women in feathered hats and high heels came in and sat down at the table with the man and his son. They didn’t speak to him, instead carrying on a whispered conversation behind gloved hands, glancing at him occasionally with raised eyebrows. One of the women spoke suddenly, her words stilted as though their dismissal of him had been only a brief lapse of manners. “Taking him home to his mother then?”
The man started and glanced at his son. “Uh, yeah. In Moose Jaw.”
“That’s good. He doesn’t look well, you know.”
The boy looked to be close to two years old, his skin wan, eyes pale blue. His blond hair was wispy and untrimmed.
“He’s looked like that since he was born.”
His voice had become quiet and hesitant, and his eyes softened when he looked at his son; the intense black faded to deep grey. A sadness pulled at the corners of his mouth. I wondered if any of what he said was true.
“Well, he’s sweet, even if he is a little pale.” The second girl joined the conversation, giggling behind her hand.
“Takes after his mother,” the man said proudly.
The girls nodded and went back to their whispering. But the boy’s father leaned forward, eyes shining. “Sure wish we’d come out of this damn bush, eh?”
The girls gasped in unison.
“I just mean,” he stuttered, “that a man can’t see anyth