Liberty Street by Heather Marshall

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I devoured Heather Marshall’s debut novel, “Looking for Jane” and was so excited to be provided an ARC of “Liberty Street “ in exchange for a review. I am happy to give this a five star review as I did for “Jane” , I was not disappointed and will now continue to be a huge fan of Heather’s.

I love reading about places in the Toronto local neighborhoods, which I know must hide many secrets of times gone by. Liberty village has been a popular spot for “cool, hip “ types young folks and businesses for a number of years. Who knew of the dark history of that area, and an even darker, horrific time for women if they got on the wrong side of the law, had mental illness , married interracially and bore children , or could be jailed just because their father/ husband decided that they were too wild, “incorrigible” and needed to conform? What the author describes happening to women there was page turning but I also had to look away and take breaks, as it was also difficult to read.

It is the early 1960’s, Toronto. We follow Emily Radcliffe, a junior journalist at Chatelaine, who is anxious to write her first big article for the woman’s magazine. Although she has a serious boyfriend who she expects will ask her to marry, the thought of domesticity does not sit well with her; she would prefer the route of her father, a well known journalist and soldier who survived to write about it. She has an identical twin sister who is the model young wife and mother. Emily stumbles on a potential story when she is approached by a female prisoner of the Mercer prison for women, on Liberty street. She has the backing of her hero and mentor Doris Anderson (a real person, I remember her as editor. I used to subscribe to Chatelaine as a young woman) …who agrees to support her . Her father reluctantly agrees to help her get in to the prison at Emily’s begging, he realizes it may be dangerous but he understands Emily’ s need to search for the truth.

A parallel story unfolds in the 1990s with a female detective, Rachel Mackenzie, who is called to determine the identity of a young woman buried in an unmarked grave in small-town Ontario (Bayfield, now cottage country). Rachel had a tumultuous upbringing marred by an unstable mother who suffered from mental illness, which was left untreated during a time when these things were misunderstood. The family dysfunction and secrets added more darkness to an already tragic story around the women’s prison.

The author’s conducted some deep research , and she wove such an impressive tale, connecting two stories in the most creative and satisfying way. Interestingly the parts about Rachel growing up resonated with me as well, it seems we would have been contemporaries, her descriptions of pop culture at the time were bang-on.

I love a good Canadian author, so happy to have discovered this one to follow!

Thanks to NetGalley, penguin random house and the author for the advanced copy… what a fabulous book!



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