Jack Fawcett has been kind enough to share many of the letters you’ve written to him, and I know how diligently you trained as a nurse, and how dismayed you were when all your efforts to improve the lives of people at Caloola came to nothing.

I know that you feel that you did good works with the children at Delaney House, and that you do not deserve to be in prison.

I’m asking you, as your niece, to consider the prison that we are in.

I know that you didn’t know my mum – your sister – all that well, but I hope that you can understand that while she wasn’t important to you, she was everything to us.

I know that you’ve told Jack Fawcett that you don’t have a clue as to where she might be, but I know in my heart that my mother would never, ever willingly leave us, and so I guess I’ve had to face the fact that something must have happened to her, and that nothing can now change that.

And that is why I’m writing to you, Snow.

I believe that all of us are born with a conscience, and I’m asking you, please, Snow, ease your conscience by telling us what you know.

Tell us where our mother is, Snow.

Tell us so that we might bury her.

We will never stop asking you.

Reading Group Questions

1. Sisters of Mercy starts with Jack saying he was surprised to get a letter from Snow Delaney in Silverwater Prison. What does she hope to achieve in writing to a journalist?

2. What was Jack trying to achieve in writing back to Snow?

3. Would you, as a reader, like to have seen more of Jack’s letters to Snow? Why do you think the author – who is herself a journalist – chose to leave them out?

4. Jack kept all of Snow’s letters and published them in a book without her consent. Is that a fair thing for him to have done? Should he have sought Snow’s permission to publish the letters or is she fair game?

5. Jack seems to be of the view that the police investigation into Agnes Moore’s disappearance was slow and perhaps even flawed from the start. Do you agree?

6. Agnes was left in an orphanage during the war. Do you think her mother thought she would be safer there or is Snow right when she says that her mother never wanted any children?

7. Snow goes into her first real job at Caloola full of hope as to what she might be able to achieve. As a reader do you have any experience of social programs like ‘normalisation’? What do you think of the decision to close all the old institutions? Is there enough support for parents of disabled children today?

8. In Sisters of Mercy no checks were done on Delaney House for many years, and Snow was able to do what she wanted to the children in her care essentially. Can you easily believe that such a thing is possible?