Roseghetto, Kirsty Jagger

An unforgettable novel about growing up in public housing in Western Sydney.

Shayla is on a newspaper assignment when she returns to the public housing estate where she grew up and finds it demolished. The locals have been evicted, their homes erased, their stories too. Standing among the rubble of Rosemeadow, Shayla is assailed by her memories of living there. The bad secret Daddy asked her to keep. Mummy rekindling a dangerous romance. Making friends with ‘the gutter kids’.

Surrounded by poverty, confronted by domestic violence, Shayla found her escape in reading. Now it’s time to tell the stories of Rosemeadow, including her own.

Roseghetto is an unforgettable and moving coming-of-age story, an account of breaking the cycle of violence and poverty.