Alice is only nine years old in 1910 when she is sent to the feared Coast Hospital lazaret at Little Bay in Sydney, a veritable prison where more patients are admitted than will ever leave. She is told that she’s visiting her mother, who disappeared one day when Alice was two. Once there, Alice learns her mother is suffering from leprosy and that she has the same disease.

As she grows up, the secluded refuge of the lazaret becomes Alice’s entire world, her mother and the other patients and medical staff her only human contact. The patients have access to a private sandstone-edged beach, their own rowboat, a piano and a library of books, but Alice is tired of the smallness of her life and is thrilled by the thought of the outside world. It is only when Guy, a Yuwaalaraay man wounded in World War I, arrives at The Coast, that Alice begins to experience what she has yearned for, as they become friends and then something deeper.

Set in a 19th century leper colony, Eleanor Limprecht’s historical fiction The Coast pivots around a cast of characters all directly impacted by leprosy in Australia in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Exploring love, family and courage, and set in the remote Little Bay just outside of Sydney, we meet a series of characters all forced into isolation after being diagnosed with leprosy.

The Coast centres around a largely unknown time in Australian history – the oppression of people suffering from leprosy and their subsequent shaming and forced isolation.

This novel offers what feels like a birds eye view of that era. We meet characters suffering from leprosy or perhaps working in the colony, but the story is void of any judgement or opinion. Eleanor is simply presenting the time as it likely happened, for us to interpret and understand on our own.

“I was not brave enough to ask Dr Moffat why he came now, rather than when we were feverish. Asking questions of adults was insolence. Wearing white cotton gloves, he scraped our skin with a little razor and placed it in a tiny lidded dish.”

Written in both first and third person, each chapter moves between characters – their POV and the accompanying year is stated at the beginning of the chapter. Eleanor offers an intimate voice, paired-back and emotional as we come to understand each character and how their lives have been impacted by the leprosy colony.

Eleanor’s writing has much to offer, bringing to life quite a large suite of characters and inviting us to fall in love with each of them. They all seem quite hopeless in the beginning, plagued by something they don’t understand or perhaps something they cannot control. But, over time, characters intersect and find solace in each other and their experiences. As the reader, we warm to their plight and find their journey both heartbreaking and heartfelt.

“He watched a moment’s grief pass over Clea’s face, but when she raised her hand to touch her hair it was gone, as quick as a fish leaping. He knew more than she thought he did.”

For those perspectives written in third person, Eleanor’s voice takes on that of an omniscient POV – we understand not only their movements and their situations, but their perspectives and feelings on their surroundings. And for the protagonist Alice, who is written in first person, whilst she is treated as an outsider and her leprosy forces her into isolation, she gets to spend time with the mother who left when she was young (who also suffers from leprosy). There is a contrast here that is quite interesting to read – her illness allows her to reconnect with her mother, and there are elements of her life that are a comfort to her. But at the same time, she and her mother are treated as lepers, hidden away from society with only each other for company.

Just a tiny note, but I did find it a little confusing at first trying to keep track of the characters. The perspectives shift quite frequently and I had to flick back to triple check whose story I was reading, what year it was, and how that corresponded to the previous chapters.

“Some days, instead of fury, I succumbed to weariness. I would stay in bed longer than I should, watching the square of daylight from the window shift across the bedroom. I read all of the book Dr Stenger brought me, all of the books I could borrow, but it was not the same as school.”

Vivid literary fiction with harsh, wild landscapes and damned but hopeful characters, The Coast is suitable for readers of literary fiction and historical sagas. Fans of familial tales might also enjoy this one. Readership skews female, 30+

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Coast
Eleanor Limprecht
June 2022
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers

Berlin, 1934. Sofie Rhodes is the aristocratic wife of a scientist whose post-WWI fortunes change for the better when her husband, Jurgen, is recruited for Hitler’s new rocket project. But too late they realise the Nazis’ plans to weaponise Jurgen’s technology as they begin to wage war against the rest of Europe.

Alabama, 1949 Jurgen is one of hundreds of Nazi scientists offered pardons and taken to the US to work for the CIA’s fledgling space program. Sofie, now the mother of four, misses Germany terribly and struggles to fit in among the other NASA wives.

When news about the Rhodes family’s affiliation with the Nazi party spreads, idle gossip turns to bitter rage, and the act of violence that results will tear apart a community and a family before the truth is finally revealed – but is it murder, revenge or justice?

Inspired by true events, Kelly Rimmer’s The German Wife explores morality and guilt within WWII Germany, examining how one couple manage to survive the Nazi regime but then struggle to build a life for themselves in the United States. While they may not have directly enacted the horrors in those concentration camps or forced labour camps, they did nothing to stop the regime and must process their guilt over the events that transpired.

The German Wife is split between two time periods and two POVs — in present, we’re in 1950 and in the past, 1930. Over the course of the novel, we progress through the past through two different perspectives. First, Sofie Rhodes, German, the wife of a scientist who feels coerced into joining Hitler’s regime to help him build rockets for his war. And in the other perspective we meet Lizzie, a young American woman and the hardworking daughter of a farmer, whose brother has never recovered — physically or mentally — from his service in the war. When Sofie and other German families move into her Alabama town, she feels uncomfortable about them living in such close proximity. At times, her behaviour turns hostile.

“The drought changed a lot of things and none of it made sense to me either. I still got out of bed and I still did my share. Mother, Henry, and I didn’t have a choice — we had to get used to a new way of operating because running the farm was a four-man operation.”

Kelly raises some interesting questions around accountability and morality during a time in history like WWII Germany. On the one hand, Sofie and her husband are doing what they can to survive. On the other, do they deserve a comfortable life in Alabama after the horrors they witnessed? Should Sofie’s husband see punishment for what he witnessed and did nothing to stop?

As always, Kelly crafts three-dimensional characters with heart. We come to understand their pain and so we sympathise for them, even if their actions are not necessarily worthy of sympathy.

The element of the novel that I think will interest most readers is the rocket program that Sofie’s husband was involved in — this is based on true events, and was certainly something I’d never known about. It’s clear that a lot of research has gone into making this element of the story authentic and believable. The detailed depiction of this rocket program added considerable depth to Sofie’s story.

“Adele was savvy, hardworking, stubborn, and compassionate. It stung sometimes that she seemed capable of boundless love for strangers, but she still seemed to have little affection for me.”

With the dual timeline and dual perspectives, I did find it quite hard to keep track of the different voices in the beginning of the novel. Particularly given most chapters are actually not that long, so we are jumping between women and decades in quick succession.

“I knew he was thinking about the millions of souls injured or killed in our name…on our watch. I did that too, constantly cycling through memories and facts, as it this time when I played them through my mind, I could change the outcome.”

Observational and taut with its writing, The German Wife is recommended for readers of historical fiction. Readership skews female, 30+

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

The German Wife
Kelly Rimmer
May 2022
Hachette Book Publishers Australia