Kit’s Law

by Donna Morrissey Viking
Penguin Book Canada Ltd

The bargain table out the front of a bookshop is impossible to resist, I just have to have a look for that special book to appear there. Recently, the book Kit’s Law, caught my eye from such a table and at $2.50 I thought it worth a read.

Kit is a young girl living on the outskirts of a remote fishing town in Canada. She is the illegitimate child of a mentally handicapped woman who is treated as an unpaid whore by many townsmen. Lizzie is Kit’s Grandmother and she cares for her daughter and granddaughter in her cliff top cottage. Lizzie is a determined, hard old woman without a lot of friends in the town, but she does her best to ensure Kit fits in as best she can.

Lizzie tries to let Kit see that she has nothing to be ashamed of and has the right to hold her head high. The morning after such a conversation, Kit finds her grandmother dead in her bed and feels her world fall down around her. Sprouting good intentions, a group of townspeople attempt to take Kit to an orphanage and away from her Mother. The town Doctor, however, steps in and enables Kit to remain in her precious gully home.

Some time later, the same group again try to separate the pair when both are ill. This results in the minister’s son being sent out to regularly cut wood for the women’s stove. The young man, Sid, quickly befriends the mother and tried getting to know Kit as well. Gradually, a relationship builds and they fall in love.

Tragedy strikes in the form of the local rapist attacking the gully cottage and Sid’s defence. Surprisingly, the young lovers are then separated for over a year before their spontaneous elopement. After the wedding, they visit Sid’s parents in time for a second tragedy to hit them. I must admit that I had guessed at this twist a little earlier, but it was hidden by other potential twists, so the story wasn’t too predictable. At this, Sid disappears and Kit again struggles to survive in a hostile township.

The ending is not exactly a happy one, but it does leave Kit reconciled with her life and loving her Mother. No further twists were introduced, and Morrissey openly discounted other predictable endings.

Filed under: Book reviews