The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge

Rachel Hore

DARK secrets dating back to the years after the Second World War still haunt an elderly academic woman who is now living a quiet and secluded life in a rural corner of Norfolk.

It will be an ambitious young journalist, facing challenges in her own life, who will finally seize the chance to lift the veil from the past and reveal a devastating truth which is set to have far-reaching consequences for both women.

Rachel Hore (pictured below) – a writer who has found a rich territory for her beautifully emotive storytelling in the the towns and rural charms of her home turf in Norfolk – returns with a moving and powerful mystery inspired by her own family history and an interest in exploring the obstacles that have too often been thrown in the path of aspiring women scientists.

Weaving seamlessly between two different time frames – London in the 1940s and ‘50s and the lush, captivating landscape of the stunning Norfolk Broads sixty years later – The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge is a fascinating and compelling story brimming with the authenticity and genuine warmth that are the hallmark of Hore’s novels.

In 2010, 30-year-old Stef Lansdown is at a low point after being made redundant from her high-flying job as a journalist on a national broadsheet newspaper in London and going through an acrimonious split from her lawyer boyfriend.

Now working freelance, Stef is researching the experiences of women in science for a new book she has won a commission to write. When her mother – who recently moved to a village close to one of Norfolk’s beautiful Broads – suggests that she interviews Dr Nancy Foster, a naturalist who studied zoology in the 1940s and now lives in Dragonfly Lodge on the nearby wildlife reserve, Stef decides it could be ideal for her research.

But Nancy is reluctant to be interviewed because she doesn’t want her ‘past, her secret pain, the injustice done to her’ to become fodder for some sensationalist account in a book.  She wants to be left alone to enjoy her last years, and her grandson Aaron agrees, arguing that journalist ‘dig around too much.’

However, when Nancy meets Stef and learns that she is simply eager to find out how scientific research has been hampered over the years by being entrenched in ‘a man’s world,’ she finally opens up and winds back the clock to 1947 and a world where marriage and children were considered a woman’s most likely occupation.

Nancy’s ambitions lay far beyond that and after reading Zoology at London University, she relished the challenges of lectures and laboratory work even while constantly negotiating the ensuing conflicts. Her story is exactly what Stef had hoped for but as Nancy becomes more trusting, Stef senses that there is fear and unhappiness buried deep within her. Determined to gain Nancy’s trust, discover the source of her distress, heal old wounds, and to use her power to restore Nancy’s reputation, Stef comes up against Aaron who is very protective of his grandmother. And as she starts to pull together the strands of Nancy’s story, it soon becomes clear that someone doesn’t want the truth to be told…

The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge is an immaculately researched and intriguing mystery, a tale of gender, ambition, male prejudice and female determination, with Nancy’s story standing as a reminder that discrimination is just one of the factors that has historically made the lives of women scientists much harder than men’s. Through descriptive scene setting, and an exquisitely created sense of mid-20^th century time and place, which allows the unfolding of secrets to gather momentum as the past catches up with the present, we witness the truth of Nancy’s life emerging from decades of withdrawal and silence.

With powerful emotions pulsing through the lives of both women, a plot full of mystery and intrigue, a thoughtful and intelligent reflection on the challenges faced by women in the working world, a beautiful slow-burn romance, and a dénouement that will touch your heart, this is the perfect companion for summer holiday reading.
(Simon & Schuster, hardback, £16.99)