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Rated ★★★★★ from over 100 orders ✔
At Harrowford Hall in rural Victoria, 1973, Detective Sergeant Eleanor Smith catches her first homicide: a nurse dead, a graveyard choked with weeds, and records that don’t add up. The home for girls in crisis once promised safety under Mrs Montague’s strict rules, yet fourteen-year-old Jane McEvoy and runaway Marilyn Pollard tell a different story. Yeowart threads 1961 with 1973, balancing survivor voices with a precise eye and steady pulse.
A detective must learn what really happened to the girls before another life is erased. She sifts yellowed ledgers, damp corridors and the sharp reek of antiseptic, while locals close ranks and the past claws back. Yeowart blends procedural tension with moral clarity, asking who gets to be believed and why. Tropes: institutional secrets, women seeking justice.
What you are getting
- Format: Trade paperback
- Pages: 496
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
- Imprint: Penguin
- ISBN: 9781760895747
- Publication date: 2 September 2025
- Condition: New
Why this book matters
Yeowart turns a slice of Australian social history into a measured, morally serious crime novel that gives voice to those the system ignored. Alternating timelines build cause and consequence, while the setting of a so-called refuge exposes how institutions can hide harm. It’s grounded, humane and quietly furious.
For readers who enjoyed
Dirt Town (Hayley Scrivenor); The Dry (Jane Harper); The Wrong Woman (J.P. Pomare); Dark Mode (Ashley Kalagian Blunt); The Ruin (Dervla McTiernan).
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