Dollybirdby Anne LazurkoPublished by Shadowpaw Press RepriseReview by Madonna Hamel$24.99 ISBN 9781989398586 Dollybird is one of the few novels I’ve read more than once. I’m thrilled to see it re-released. It is always interesting to see how a second read strikes one after a few years have passed. The first time I read it I was sitting on the edge of my chair, anxious for the future of Moira, a young woman who was forced to leave her home in Newfoundland after becoming pregnant out of wedlock in 1906. A homestead officer finds her a job in Saskatchewan as a live-in housekeeper for a man looking for a “dollybird”. Lazurko’s novel gives us glimpses into the life of a woman compromised by culture, time and place, and by poverty of both means and mercy. Lazurko does it with the word “dollybird”. A dollybird can mean a sweet young thing, but in the day of the novel’s setting, it also meant, ambiguously, a housekeeper and/or a prostitute. The novel looks at how a woman can slide from one role into another, especially when finding herself in an isolated community where she may be the only woman for miles. I remember the…