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      Astray is Emma Donoghue’s fourth short story collection and was published in September 2012. The stories in the collection are fictional but based on factual people and events in history. The focus of the stories lies in emigration, with three sections, “Departures”, “In Transit” and “Arrivals and Aftermaths” containing five stories each. The first of these sections, “Departures” deals with the the pre-emigration situations of people such as Matthew Scott and Jumbo the elephant in the story ‘Man and Boy’. Scott is Jumbo’s keeper and when the elephant is bought by an American circus owner, Barnum, Scott decides to go with him, they leave London Zoo to go to America towards the end of the nineteenth century. The story held historical significance due to the despair felt by hundreds of children at the time, many even writing to Queen Victoria begging her not to let Jumbo leave England. Another story in the section deals with the murder of an American slave owner, Brown, by his young wife and their house slave who subsequently run away together. Donoghue takes all forms of emigration – all sorts of reasons for leaving and many interesting pieces of historical significance that are today forgotten and in them creates stories that are as real and raw as they are heartfelt and brave. Donoghue also impresses in her storytelling by steering away from the expected; she does not take on the voice of the scheming widow Mrs. Gomez in “The Widow’s Cruse” leaving many questions such as why she wished to cheat her husband out of his fortune, unanswered. Instead, Donoghue takes on the world of Mrs. Gomez’s naive lawyer, Mr. Huddlestone. Mr. Huddlestone’s greed and selfishness do not allow him to see past Mrs. Gomez’s act.

“In Transit” is a collection of five stories in which all the characters are caught in a sort of limbo, some of whom do not or cannot escape. In this section the story that struck me most was that of Sarah Bell and the child she lost to the Orphan Trains, Lily May Bell in ‘The Gift’. I found the balance was struck very profoundly in the plea of the mother to regain the child she had temporarily placed in care and the elderly couple to whom the child was adopted. The pull between the fear of the elderly couple in losing this child that had come into their lives and the pain of the mother who has lost the child they gained is poignant and leaves the reader with a sense of unsureness between what and who is right and wrong. ‘Snowblind’ was another story that I particularly enjoyed from the collection. The story sees two men, Goat and Injun, united in their bid to find gold in western America in the 1890’s. The two young men set up a temporary home and become what is plain to see, a couple of sorts. As the story is by nature, a short one it is not an easy relationship to decipher but it does have the classical symptoms of care, happiness, jealousy, sex and anger that are often significant in conventional romantic relationships. The reason this story was so poignant for me is that it is difficult to interpret their state of limbo; their temporary home and state as time elapses and seasons pass. Their fear of change that could change and interrupt the lives they have created and that have now become so normal for them but remains a taboo in the world outside their cabin. Or is it not fear of change but greed? The chance that they could strike gold – can this hope of gold keep them going as long as they do? Or can love endure all? Including gangrene and scurvy…

The final section of the collection is “Arrivals and Aftermaths”. These stories deal with life after emigration, what has this new country brought to the emigrants and their future generations? The variety in these outcomes of emigration is striking, one story focuses on a family who moved from France and made their fortune in Louisiana, essentially a Creole family whose life still very much remains in France and involved in French culture. Another story relates the life of Richard Berry, an English settler in Cape Cod around the time of the plantations in the New World. Berry began to wildly accuse members of his community of sexual crimes he had allegedly seen them commit. The story that remains most with me is ‘Daddy’s Girl’. Imelda Hall was twenty-two when her father, a prominent and powerful figure in New York City at the time, passed away. Murray Hall was a twice married, cigar-smoking, brandy swilling elder man. It came to New York’s surprise, and indeed his daughter Imelda’s, that Murray Hall had in fact been a woman. This story holds so much mystery; nobody knows where Murray had come from as a woman, Scotland, England or Ireland perhaps, or what circumstances he came under to decoy himself or how he managed to marry twice. The very deepness of its mystery struck me as I read the story.

Donoghue’s focus in the collection lies in emigration, before, during and after in the lives of many characters. But her stories do not simply conclude at this, they are not only imaginings of what was or could have or should have been, there is happiness, anger, loss, passion, love, hate that are experienced by each character. Their emigrationary stance is simply the backdrop to the more important aspects of their lives.