Lowbridge
by Lucy Campbell
Ultimo Press
Lowbridge was the sort of place that city people saw as their dream escape. Just one hour drive from Sydney, it was full of remote bush trails and quaint cafes. It was a destination for day-trippers and holiday makers but there was also a permanent population.
It was the beginning of 1987 when the lives of the people of Lowbridge changed forever. That was when a 17 year-old girl walked out of the Lowbridge Shopping Centre and was never seen again.
Thirty years later, Katherine Ashworth came to stay in her husband’s hometown after the sudden death of her 17 year-old girl daughter Maggie. Dependent on alcohol and sedatives, she made an attempt to detox and to pick up the pieces of her life by becoming involved with the local historical society.
“In the hours she spent in the old court house, the deep void of her own life was filled with the noise and colour of other people’s stories.” While trying to put together a display on the history of the town’s health centre that divided the town at the end of 1986, Katherine came across a photograph of the missing girl – Tess.
The narrative swings back and forth between the two times as Katherine tries to find out more about Dr Patricia Horton, who established the health centre, and the missing girl who was friends with Patricia’s daughter Sim and Katherine’s husband Jamie.
In trying to solve the disappearance, Katherine speaks to the residents of the town and delves into the small town politics and prejudices that existed three decades before. Not everyone involved has remained in the town and Katherine has to chase leads and encourage people to reveal long-kept secrets.
Lucy Campbell takes the reader on an exciting hunt to rule out the red herrings and find that there was more than one ‘lost girl’ in the town at the time that Tess disappeared – one was mourned and one was forgotten.
Lezly Herbert
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