10 Jan Faye Bohling, Guest Author 6 February 2016
Faye Bohling visited the Guilderton Library to talk about her latest book, “The Laundry Girl”. A true story of a young girl’s struggle to understand her place in a changing world. Mostly this story will show that within us all, there is an undying capacity for love and hope regardless of history or heritage.
Faye Bohling’s story : Soon after Faye’s birth, her mother chose to leave her with a foster carer. Over subsequent years she spent short fragments of time with her mother, before she was taken to live in a convent institution for ‘wayward girls’.
Faye was just ten years old when she was put to work in the convent’s vast laundering operation, where she was given no education. Faye’s worst sin seems to have been…just being.
In 1950, when she was twelve, her mother removed her from the convent, and she then faced the difficulty of returning to school and trying to fit in, as if she had never been away.
Faye married her childhood sweetheart, but tragedy struck in 1964. Whilst she was pregnant with her fourth child, her husband drowned in a fishing accident at Ledge.
Faye remarried in 1970, and although the marriage lasted twenty tears, the liaison turned out to have difficulties which she could not have predicted.
With great determination but little formal education, Faye made a life for herself and her four children, and for many years ran her own fashion business. A strong interest in health and well-being later saw Faye invest time and money in studying aromatherapy and mediation. She also spent ten years as a promotions and fund-raising coordinator for the Cerebral Palsy Association’s Miss Australia Quest, and worked for the Autistic Association.
Faye is now a grandmother of seven and a great grandmother of one, and lives in a small country town east of Perth.
“The Laundry Girl” is on the shelves of the Library.