Launched in June, the fictional Bowen-based family saga, The Dancehall Years, is one of five finalists for this year’s Ethel Wilson Fiction category of the BC Book Prizes.
Author Joan Haggerty says her family’s history stretches back to the summer her mother was eight years old, and her grandparents set up a tent by the lagoon. The cottage Haggerty summered in was built in 1918, right below what is now know as the Bowen Lodge. Back then, it was the dance hall.
“My cottage was right underneath, so it completely affected my childhood,” says Haggerty. “We were always peaking in the windows and wanting to be grown up.”
She stresses that while the main character, Gwen, who we meet stepping onto a boat headed to Bowen with her family from at the beginning of summer, may bare resemblance to her, each character and event is a work of imagination.
The story begins in the idyllic summer of 1939, when children laugh easily, when revelers come to Bowen on booze cruises and babies take their naps in cradles placed under the big Douglas Firs. Then suddenly, it skips ahead to the summer of 1941, “when nothing’s like its supposed to be.”
Through war, secrets, illicit affairs and acts of violence, the lives of four families intersect, and Haggerty warns, “it gets rough.”
The Dancehall Years is available at the Union Steamship Company store and on Amazon.
The winners of the BC Book Prizes will be announced at the Lieutenant Governor’s Gala on April 4.
