Thorn on the Rose (Woody Creek #2) by Joy Dettman

EXCERPT: ‘You just wrote the perfect story,’ she said. ‘Born beside a railway line, raised in a railway house by the stationmaster and his mad wife, and so the heroine grew to adulthood with her unwed mother’s morals and her father’s lack of conscience – and I’ve already written the ending.’
‘You’ve got strength enough to write any ending that you want to write, darlin’.’
‘All done,’ Jenny said. ‘It’s out of my hands – gone to the publishers.’

ABOUT ‘THORN ON THE ROSE’: It is 1939 and Jenny Morrison, distraught and just fifteen years of age, has fled the tiny logging community of Woody Creek for a new life in the big smoke.

But four months later she is back – wiser, with an expensive new wardrobe, and bearing another dark secret…

She takes refuge with Gertrude, her dependable granny and Woody Creek’s indomitable midwife, and settles into a routine in the ever-expanding and chaotic household.

But can she ever put the trauma of her past behind her and realise her dream of becoming a famous singer? Or is she doomed to follow in the footsteps of her tragic and mysterious mother?

MY THOUGHTS: I loved the first in this Woody Creek series, Pearl in a Cage, but Thorn on the Rose leaves that in the dust. I was swept away by Jenny’s story. My heart broke at the misfortunes that befell her, and those she brought on herself. It seems that Jenny just can’t win a trick.

There is a richly drawn cast of characters: Gertrude, who Jenny calls ‘Granny’, the area midwife now in her seventies but still providing refuge to Jenny, Elsie and their families, still being chased after by Vern Hooper (definitely not being wooed!); Jenny, whom the father that ‘raised’ her, and I use that term loosely, once described as . . . a golden songbird, hatched into a nest of grey sparrows . . . a classical portrait, framed in gold and hung in a gallery of fools.’; Jim, Vern Hooper’s only son and heir, who falls in love with Jenny, and unwittingly starts a feud and a seemingly endless legal battle; Amber, Gertrude’s daughter and ‘mother’ to Jenny, who incessantly teeter on the edge of insanity; and Sissy, Jenny’s ‘sister’, an ugly natured woman who hates Jenny with a vengeance.

Thorn on A Rose is largely set against the background of WWII, and Dettman’s descriptions of life at that time, in both the city and the country are well researched and realistic.

This series is addictive. It is beautifully written; full of mystery, misery, joy, humor and characters that remain with me long after I have closed the covers.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#ThornontheRose @JoyDettman

THE AUTHOR: Joy Dettman was born in country Victoria and spent her early years in towns on either side of the Murray River. She sees herself as a wife, mother and grandmother, who steals time from her family to satisfy her obsessive need to write.

Joy was not always a wife, mother and grandmother. She can recall her early obsession with newspaper cartoons. They were her picture books. A newspaper shoutline allowed her to break the code of reading prior to entering a school room, thus addicting her for life to the printed word.

Woody Creek originated as a novel, in the singular, but its characters too long buried, would not be contained. It has grown into a series of seven.

I own my copy of Thorn on a Rose by Joy Dettman.