“She wasn’t wanton, profligate, pert, sluttish! She was an upstanding person – a kind person. A respectable woman who worked hard and tried to do good in the world. She didn’t need London or teaching, or to flirt or to catch a man, or any of the things Aubrey or Florence or her father thought she needed or wanted – all she asked was to choose her path. All she wanted was the barest sliver of power over her own destiny.”

Snapshots from Home is the third stand-alone novel by Australian author, Sasha Wasley. Early in 1917, twenty-three-year-old Edie Stark makes the trek from her suburban Perth home to the little rural town of York, where she’ll be teaching mathematics, geometry and science at Miss Raison’s York Girls’ School.

She feels genuinely welcome at Mrs Mason’s boarding house, more at home with her fellow teachers, Amelia and Faye, than she ever was back in Guildford. Earning more than she did at the State School will allow her to secret away some savings. Now that her brother, Aubrey is no longer there as a buffer, being out from under the iron rule of Frederick Stark, her strict, parsimonious, joyless father with his mercurial moods, insults and hissed criticisms, is a bonus.

Two years earlier, they lost Aubrey to Gallipoli, and Edie is still felled by grief. Even though Aubrey always encouraged her, she hasn’t picked up a camera since he died because it makes her too sad. But Aubrey’s fiancée, Florence Trumbull takes it upon herself to send Edie a Kodak Vest Pocket camera and signs her up to a YMCA scheme to take snaps of family and loved ones requested by boys at the front.

One of Edie’s pupils, ten-year-old Kitty Macmillan insists on becoming Edie’s assistant, reasoning that she has experience (her family owns the town’s portrait gallery) and she will know the families Edie needs to find. This worthy activity brings her into the humble homes of many ordinary folk, of whom she is certain her father would disapprove, but also opens her eyes to the realities of life for the working class.

Getting her snaps developed, and obtaining more film supplies and dyes to hand-colour the prints at Macmillan’s Portrait Gallery, Edie encounters a handsome young man, who turns out to have a reputation for shocking politics, making controversial statements and being generally argumentative. When he drives her and Kitty out for snapshot requests, he constantly challenges her beliefs and causes her read up on these topics to be better informed.

Meanwhile, when she returns to Guildford for her vacations, she discovers her father, ever conscious of class and reputation, has been cosying up to men he thinks will make suitably high-class husbands. The one he most favours for Edie is the son of a wealthy factory owner, and she soon discovers that he is everything she doesn’t want.

What a wonderful piece of historical fiction! Wasley bases her tale on true stories from the Australian Home Front and effectively demonstrates just how powerless women, the working classes, and blacks were in that early twentieth Century world dominated by the wealthy. Her extensive research is apparent on every page. Except for those she intends to be jaw-droppingly awful, Wasley’s characters have depth and appeal, and Kitty, her unconventional mother and her firebrand brother are likely to be favourites. Rich in historical detail, Wasley’s latest is interesting, entertaining and enjoyable.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Pantera Press.