A poignant, evocative and masterfully told story of a young man and woman who embark together on an emotional journey that brings them joy, heartache and ultimately understanding. Set in Trinidad, this is a powerful and full-bodied novel, rich with emotion and vivid imagery.
Myra, a proud, sensuous, hardworking woman who finds blessed release in her own restless desires; Odile, Myra's defiant teenage daughter who risks her one chance to leave the family's poverty; Sebastian, Myra's senile father who has begun to follow his fantasies into a world of trouble; Slim, Myra's worthless street vendor boyfriend who spends as much time seducing young women as he does selling trinkets; Jacob, the once-famous West Indian stickfighter who thought the hero in him was long dead until he meets Myra. And Rory, whose need for Odile's love may prove very dangerous.
A poignant, evocative and masterfully told story of a young man and woman who embark together on an emotional journey that brings them joy, heartache and ultimately understanding. Set in Trinidad, this is a powerful and full-bodied novel, rich with emotion and vivid imagery.
Myra, a proud, sensuous, hardworking woman who finds blessed release in her own restless desires; Odile, Myra's defiant teenage daughter who risks her one chance to leave the family's poverty; Sebastian, Myra's senile father who has begun to follow his fantasies into a world of trouble; Slim, Myra's worthless street vendor boyfriend who spends as much time seducing young women as he does selling trinkets; Jacob, the once-famous West Indian stickfighter who thought the hero in him was long dead until he meets Myra. And Rory, whose need for Odile's love may prove very dangerous.
This is based on the lives of real people and actual events. This remarkable story imagines the life of one young couple in the heady days of the 1880s railway boom, their struggles in the depression of the 1890s, and their rescue from poverty by the Kalgoorlie gold rush. Rob and Mary were both born and raised by the tracks in railway navvy camps, but Rob wants something better for his children and his beloved Mary. In the cold mountain air of Ben Lomond, he promises her she will have a home by the sea. Mary cares more for the people in her family than for houses but follows Rob from colony to colony as he chases opportunities until the day the work runs out, and the lives of their children are in danger. Rob and Marys quest for the great Australian dream parallels the coming together of the colonies to form the nation of Australia. At the start of the new century, it seems they have finally made it, but dreams can be easily shattered. Told with empathy for the characters and an eye for detail for social history, By the Side of the Tracks is a tribute to the thousands of navvies and their families who built the railways, which made it possible for Australia to become one nation.
In August 1882 the circus impresario P. T. Barnum called for examples of "all the uncivilized races in existence.” In response, the showman R. A. Cunningham shipped two groups of Australian Aborigines to the United States. They were displayed as "cannibals” in circuses, dime museums, fairgrounds, and other showplaces in America and Europe and examined and photographed by anthropologists. Roslyn Poignant tells the fascinating and often searing story of the transformation of the Aboriginal travelers into accomplished performers, professional savages who survived at least for a short time by virtue of the strengths they drew from their own culture and their individual adaptability. Most died somewhere on tour. A century later, the mummified body of Tambo, the first to die, was discovered in the basement of a recently closed funeral home in Cleveland, Ohio. Poignant recounts how Tambo’s posthumous repatriation stimulated a cultural renewal within the community from which he came, exposing the roots of present social and economic injustices experienced by indigenous Australians.
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