Cirrus@Austlit

'Dorothy Simmons has published two novels, Living Like a Kelly and Of Breath and Blood, and her poetry and short fiction have appeared in various literary magazines, including The Greenhouse, Southerly, 4W, Best Australian Stories 2010, and more recently in Hecate and the Newcastle Short Story Anthology. Her short story ‘Countdown’ won the Fellowship of Australian Writers Short Story award.

'Heritage and Other Stories is her second short story collection.' (Publication summary)

'PLACE: Parramatta Female Factory.
YEAR: 1827.
OCCASION: a riot.

'Newly appointed Matron Ann Gordon interviews the ringleaders, notably one Molly Malone, according to Reverend Marsden a violent criminal. She discovers that Molly, like herself, has left an illegitimate daughter behind; but there’s no time for that now. She has order to restore, and restore in time for the Factory’s Market Day, when single men come looking for a wife. Meanwhile, Molly does time in solitary confinement. No sooner is she released than Ginger Em, the young London housebreaker she has befriended, begs for help escaping…

'Nine years later, the Factory has become known as Gordonsville. Yet Ann Gordon has been dismissed. Time to leave Parramatta. Standing outside the Factory walls, she remembers the women she helped and the woman she couldn’t: Molly Malone. And whatever happened to Ginger Em?' (Publication summary)

'Greta, Victoria, 1911.

A thunder-storm forces journalist Brian Cookson to seek shelter at a roadside cottage; he is taken in by three little girls and the old woman they call Gran. Cookson starts to explain that he has to write a story about Dan Kelly and Steve Hart of the Kelly Gang being alive and well in South Africa. The old woman spins round and glares.

' "Lies, lies, lies!"

'Cookson is dumbfounded.

"But how can you know?"

"I am his mother."

'Will she ever trust a newspaper man with the truth about living like a Kelly?' (Publication summary)