The Palace of Lost Virtue #author Anthea Hodgson

In 1898, Marigold Harrington arrives on the goldfields of Western Australia with conviction in her heart. The daughter of a prospector and a proud member of the Christian Women's Temperance Union, she dreams of rescuing women the gold rush has forgotten, those trapped in the shadows of brothels and bars.

Across town, Pansy Arlington presides over the Palace of Pleasure, her own small empire built from ruin. When Marigold arrives at her door, offering God's forgiveness, Pansy surprises her with unexpected kindness.

The two women spark an unlikely friendship, but in a rough, lawless town built on greed and desire, their bond will be tested by betrayal, violence and a crime that will echo through the years.

To connect with Anthea ....
https://www.antheahodgson.com/
https://www.antheahodgson.com/books
https://www.instagram.com/antheahodgson

Transcript

0:02

It's good morning, Anthea Hodgson. Welcome to Yellow Shelf. Hello, and thank you very much for having me. I think we've got complimentary colours because you've got Yellow Shelf and I've got a blue office. I know. I'm I'm loving that blue. That's very smart. And you've got a bookshelf as well, which recently built my books of mine. Yeah, that's right. I haven't read them all, but they're all waiting for me. Me neither. So Antheart. Congratulations, your book is out now. It's called The Palace of Lost Virtue. Tell us all about your latest book. Well, this book, um, The Palace of Lost Virtue, it is a book about Kalgooli. And I don't know if you know Kalgoolie at all, but it over here in WA, it's our Wild West gold mining town. And in about 1898, there was a huge gold rush into the desert in WA, and people came from around the world, and it was just such a melting pot of cultures and people coming to live in the desert. There were literally camellias out there because it was so dry. And um we had lots of different mining towns at the time, most of which are ghost towns now, but Kalgooli has survived and it's still got what is the super pit, which you can literally see from space. There's that much gold out in Kalgooli even now. And so I wanted to write a book about Kalgooli, but it's just so huge. I thought, what would I write it about? And I was fascinated with Cal for a couple of reasons. One's the gold. But the other is they had this fascinating thing which was called containment, and that was for prostitution in Kalgooli. It was illegal, obviously, at the time, and it remained illegal for many, many years. But for about 90 years, they had this system of containment, which was brothels could be run by madams who had to be women, which was a change, because it used to be by bludgers who would beat their women and be horrible to them. So it could be run by women. They had to stay in the brothel or they'd get kicked out of town and put on the train back to Perth. They couldn't even drink in town or go to the local shop unless they were with their madam. So it was very control. And I wanted to write about that. And I discovered this wonderful um sex worker, and her name was Pansy Arlington, which is not her real name, and she came from Kentucky. And I thought, how bizarre that a woman came all the way from Kentucky to work in the in the bo in the bush in WA and she died a horrible, horrible death. And I thought I have to do something with Pansy Arlington. And her real name is Maggie Wilmot, and she is buried, unmarked grave in Kalgooli now. So I thought I have to find a way to write about her. So I've written about Pansy Arlington and a fictional character, which is Marigold, and Marigold's young lady with the Christian women's temperance movement, which was trying to help women who were affected by alcoholism and drinking, which, of course, in Kalgoy was rife. And so there were sly groggers and there was all that. And so Marigold is a fictional character, but she's based on those women and they form a really unlikely friendship. And then on top of that, in 1926, there was a murder in Kalgoolie, which was two gold detection unit policemen, Pittman and Walsh, and they rode their bicycles out because it's two drive for horses, and they were murdered out in the bush a hundred years ago this year, and they were chopped up, burnt, and thrown down a mineshaft and not discovered for a couple of weeks. And so my story cuts between Marigold in 1926 and back in 1898. So it's a mystery, it's a friendship, it's some romance, and it's Kalgooli Wild West. And the murder. Yeah, which is true. Yeah. Yeah, and inspired, like you said, inspired by real events and real people. Um tell us a bit about your writing journey because you've written this is your fourth novel, fourth book. Um tell us about, yeah, like the decision to write about Kalgooli and the history. Obviously, you live in the West. The West Yeah, tell us about that. I yeah, I think everything that I have written so far has sort of come from my own family because I'm a wheat belt girl from I'm from Country WA, a town called Yillery, which is very small. And um, so my first two books were set there. I renamed it Windstorm, which is actually the name of my farm. Um, and that's out yellow and my far my brother is still farming out there. And so though those were my first two books were Drifter and the Cowgirl, and then my next book still was family-based because my great-aunt Minnie died in the Banker Island Massacre in World War II. Um, they escaped from Singapore. And if you've heard of um Vivian Bullwinkle, she survived the massacre. But my great-aunt Minnie um was was died in that, and so um The War Nurses is a retelling of that, very close to the actual history. So this one with um Pansy, I don't really have a family connection to Pansy in particular, but um it's still very WA and it's still history, and I think my family, and particularly my mum's side, have always been interested in history and family history, and so I've kind of picked that up from my mum. And so when I discovered um that fantastic character, I thought, well, I've got to do something with that because I think um when we think of things like Kalgooli and Gaul, we think of the men and and the greed and the and the and the and the deprivations, but the deprivations of those women and the women out on the stations or the women out there supporting their husbands, there are actually a few couple of female doctors working out there. One of them was a Canadian who literally rode a camel around helping people. Like they were incredible women, and a lot of them involved in the labor movement, a lot of them were concerned about rights for women. So it was a really interesting time for women. And I thought, how grim to be working sex worker in Kalgooli. There's no running water until C.Y. O'Connor uh did his wonderful um we had water pipelines the longest in the world at the time. That didn't exist at the time that these girls were servicing all those dusty men who had been out in the bush and had come in for a good time. Um, and they're having to pay sixpence for a bucket of water. So what a grim, grim life that must have been for them. So I thought I wanted to do something about the women and what it must have been like to be them. And the hypocrisy of the time, because obviously the sex workers are earning kind of decent money, it's not amazing money, but it's better than they would have had a chance to earn otherwise. But at the same time, total, total priors because it's sex work, of course. And so that plays into the plot of the story as to how these people are viewed and the friendship between those two women. Yeah. And Andy, I'm curious because I'm assuming you love the research that goes into this. Look, I love it while it's once it's done. Okay. There's when you're doing research, there's often two problems with it. One is there's not enough, and in terms of sex workers, there's not much because no one's written much about them. There's lots of stories of um when the men have gone out, they've written memoirs and their families have passed them around, and you find them in secondhand shops. So there's so much about the the mining and the men and the blah, blah, blah. That's all fine. Not much about the actual sex workers, so that's tough. So I tend to find it either goes in one of two ways. Either there's nothing, and it's frustrating, and you go through, I've literally got piles of books here that I that couldn't help me. Um, or there's so much that you don't know what to use, and just like I'm just overwhelmed because, and I think my next book will be that because it's World War I. And there's just so much stuff that you go, oh, what you know, there's 10 kilos of books. What am I gonna like? I've I've only got this much book to write, and I've got this much stuff. So yeah, it goes either way. I find it hard, but I I am in in terms of human history and human stories, I'm really fascinated. I'm not as good with details like this battalion marched on this thing and dug this trench at this location. Like, I'm not as into that, but in terms of human stories, uh yeah, I find it fascinating. Yeah, yeah. Well, Andrea, I think we've got our audience to get really curious about this. This is a really interesting story. Andrea, if we're watching anywhere in the world, we want to know about you, we want to know about the book or even your your previous books. You've got a website, you're on Instagram. Point us in the direction, because I would love to be able to share that. I have got an Instagram, it's everything's literally under my name, Anthea Hodson, because I'm have lacking imagination, which is sad for a writer. But so Andrea Hodson, Instagram, Anthea Hodson, Facebook. I'm embarrassed to say, because I'm so not techie, I do have Anthea Hodson as my website. I'm promised I've just worked out what my password is this morning because I'm gonna get back in. I haven't got even got this book on me. I'll do my best. So but yeah, there's that. So I would I do exist online. You you can find me. Yeah, I'm gonna put some links in the show notes to make it easy for anyone to get curious. Thank you. I couldn't do links, that would be beyond me. It isn't that hard, trust me. Um, and the I did hear in there that there are going to be future books. So when those future books come out, I would love to have you back. I would love to do that. I would love to try and stop me. I would love it. Yep, very happy. I'm excited about my next one. It might have a ghost, Jenna. I'm very excited about it. Okay, I'm here. Thank you, bye. Cheers.