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…

Dollybird by Anne Lazurko Published by Coteau Books Reviewed by Jackie Blakely $19.95 ISBN 978-1-55050-563-4 Dollybird, by Anne Lazurko, is a hopeful tale of love and loss on the Canadian prairies in the early 1900’s. Written in first person narrative, Lazurko brings to life the stories of Dillan, an Irish immigrant from Cape Breton, fleeing memories of a dead wife and poverty, and Moira from Halifax, pregnant and sent to Saskatchewan by her parents until the baby is born and adopted. Lazurko weaves their tales, chapter by chapter, as the two strangers struggle to come to terms with loss and change while making a new life for themselves in Ibsen, Saskatchewan. Beautifully set in the backdrop of the Canadian prairie wilderness, Dollybird is a remembrance of hardship and new frontiers. While Dillan tries desperately to get over the death of his wife shortly after childbirth, Moira struggles with being abandoned by her lover and her parents, forced to live in the middle of an unsettled land until her child is born and she can resume her dream of becoming a doctor. When Moira takes a job as Dillan’s housekeeper – his dollybird – she finds herself becoming more accustomed to…