To Dance at the Palais Royale

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

To Dance at the Palais Royale is the moving story of a young Scottish
girl who comes to Toronto in the late 1920s to work as a domestic.
Seventeen-year-old Aggie is determined to help her struggling family in
Loughlinter, where the coal mines have already destroyed her older
brother. She meets with both harsh and kindly people, in a class-ridden
society where existence for the poor is measured in cents, and the
struggle for a pair of old boots can turn friends into enemies. There is
high drama when a lost watch in her employer’s house puts her job and
her reputation at risk. There are also many touches of humor, such as
the Scottish belief that Canada is a country so wealthy that it can heat
the streets, a legend bred from the steam arising from the grates of
storm sewers.

Place, era, and society are vividly re-created in this powerful
coming-of-age tale by an author whose aunts were among the thousands of
girls who came from the British Isles as domestics in the 1920s and
1930s. Highly recommended.