Lowbridge by Lucy Campbell

 

Lowbridge by Lucy Campbell.

Published 6th July 2023 by Ultimo Press.

From the cover of the book:

A missing girl. Decades of silence. A secret too big to bury.

1987: It’s late summer and a time of change when a 17-year-old girl leaves the local shopping centre in the sleepy town of Lowbridge and is never seen again. Her unsolved disappearance is never far from the town’s memory. There’s those who grew up in the shadow of her loss whose own lives were altered forever, and those who know more than they’re saying.

It just takes an outsider to ask the right questions. 

2018: Katherine Ashworth, shattered by the death of her daughter, moves to her husband’s hometown. Searching for a way to pick up the pieces of her life, she joins the local historical society and becomes obsessed with the three-decades-old mystery.

As Katherine digs into that summer of 1987, she stumbles upon the trail of a second girl who vanished and was never missed because no one cared enough to see what was happening in plain sight. Her trail could lead right to Katherine’s door.

In a town simmering with divisions and a cast of unforgettable characters, Lowbridge is a heart-wrenching mystery about the girls who are lost, the ones who are mourned and those who are forgotten.

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1987. In the small town of Lowbridge, amid a summer of turmoil over plans to establish a women's centre in its environs, a seventeen-year-old girl goes missing. Tess Dawes is never seen again. Her disappearance marks those left behind in different ways, but no one is unmoved by the tragedy.

2018: Katherine Ashworth, rocked by the loss of her teenage daughter moves to Lowbridge, the childhood home of her husband Jamie. Her grief has consumed her and driven a wedge between the couple, but she finds a lifeline in the town's sleepy historical society, where she becomes interested in the case of Tess Dawes.

As Katherine digs into the events surround Tess' disappearance, she discovers that more than one girl went missing that summer, and she is determined to find out what happened to them both - even if it means stirring up memories that many in this small town would prefer were left alone.

The story unfurls in two timelines, one following events around the time when Tess went missing, and the other following Katherine's rooting into the past as a way to save herself from the pit of despair she has fallen into. It did take me a while to get into the rhythm of Campbell's writing, but once you begin to see the shape of the story, it becomes clear that she has much more than your usual small town Aussie crime yarn in mind.

Using the compelling mystery of a missing girl as the framework for this novel, Campbell weaves intricate themes to explore women's rights, delving into the gulf between those with bright futures and those facing hard choices to survive. Expectation, entitlement, and the assumptions people make are all touched on with a deft hand before the truth behind what happened to Tess Dawes is revealed - and Campbell does a splendid job shining a light on the things that have changed since 1987, and the things that remain the same.

What Campbell also does incredibly well is to probe the many faces of grief and loss. I am very impressed with how she looks at the way inconsolable grief can affect those left behind. She writes with real insight into the way loss can tear relationships asunder, especially through the emotionally heart-wrenching scenes between Katherine and Jamie, but she also shows how it can bring people together to promote healing. Ultimately, through all the sadness in these pages, this is actually a story about acceptance and hope, which I was not expecting.

This is a promising debut, and I have to admire Campbell's ambition in touching on so many challenging issues in telling this story. While there are moments when the crime and emotional elements do not quite gel, and the pace of the story falls away, this book shows all the signs of a writer that will get better and better as she hones her craft. I really look forward to reading what comes next from the pen of Lucy Campbell.

Lowbridge is available to buy now in Hardcover, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Ed PR for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Lucy Campbell has worked as a writer and sub-editor across magazines, newspapers and non-fiction books. Lowbridge is her first novel. She lives in Canberra with her husband and three children.