‘The Sulphur Springs Cure’ by Jeffrey Round

Published by Cormorant Books,
16 June 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-77086-728-4

Violet Adams awakes feeling confused and muddled, the edges of a dream now beginning to recede.  She steadies herself; she is in her bedroom in her home on the outskirts of British Columbia. The year is 2009. Only a few minutes earlier she had been at the Sulphur Springs Hotel in 1939. She has had this dream three times this week. In the dream she is a teenager lifting a stone from a crevice in a wall. How long will the memories of that time continue to haunt her.

With the arrival of her niece Claire the youngest of her five nieces and nephews the dream fades. Claire is the only one to offer up her time to assist Violet in her decision to sell her home and move into senior accommodation. As Violet’s mind now wanders back to the years, she is brought back to the present when Claire refers to a portrait of Violet’s mother and asks when it was taken?  ‘At a spa before the war’ says Violet, at The Sulphur Springs Hotel in Ontario.  But it no longer exists. It was lovely place’. Violet is shaking. ‘I think I killed someone there’.

As Claire sits there Violet tells her account of her stay at the Sulphur Springs Hotel, which was prompted by her mother’s misdiagnosis of a sprained ankle, and the recommendation to take the waters at the Sulphur Springs Hotel. Violet relates to Claire her unexpected friendship with Julia the daughter of the hotel owner, Enid. and the many people she met during her long stay there.  In particular, Ned the gardener for whom, at 14 years old Violet had what in those day was known as a ‘crush’.

And so, at 84 years old Violet accompanied by Claire decides to travel back to the hotel, now in ruins, to make peace with her ghosts.

A nostalgic and fascinating mystery, as Violet seeks to uncover a mystery that has never been solved. Can she achieve this 70 years after the event?
Highly recommended.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett

Jeffrey Round is an award-winning writer, director and playwright. His first novel, A Cage of Bones, was published in 1997 by the Gay Men's Press (UK). It garnered acclaim and topped bestseller lists in Canada, the US, Iceland.