You know it’s a good writer’s biography when after you shut the book you scamper-damper to get all the author’s books through inter-library loans. And it’s like Christmas when the inter-library loans come in.

Now if you’ve read my review of Monica Dicken’s An Open Book, you know that the section where she discusses her researches into child welfare with the “Cruelty Man” had me choking back the tears. So of course the moment a whole lovely stack of Monica Dickens novels got lugged home from the library, I was digging out Kate and Emma, the book inspired by the “Cruelty Man”. If you haven’t read An Open Book, the “Cruelty Man” (or lady) is a child welfare officer. And the parents usually loathe the “Cruelty Man” and assumed their children are going to be snatched away and stuffed in a home.

But let’s talk about Kate and Emma shall we?

In the simplest of terms, Kate and Emma is the story of two teenage girls, Kate (unloved and unwanted girl from the lower class) and Emma (a judge’s daughter). But one day while Emma is visiting her father’s court in the Juvenile system, sixteen year old Kate is one of the cases. Kate has run away from home and her parents don’t want her back. Just another case in the hundreds or thousands that Emma’s father has seen. But something about Kate stirs an interest in Emma. And the two become unlikely friends.

Now at this point, a novel where the lower class Kate and upper class Emma could go a few ways. The easy way is to have Emma take Kate under her wing, tidy her up, educate her and have Kate find Mr Right and her and Emma could live next door to each other and everything would be tea and scones and lovely forever and ever. That would be a very boring book. And yes this is coming from someone who adores Cinderella/makeover stories like Jutland Cottage and The Thing About Jane Spring. But what makes those books different from the very boring but would certainly sell to a certain market book is a certain bite and wit.

Luckily, Monica Dickens doesn’t take the easy way. In fact, the alternating voices of Kate and Emma took a few chapters to get used to but give it those few chapters and you’ll find it hard to put down Kate and Emma.

Kate is fortunate enough to land in a loving foster home with run by Mollyarthur who wouldn’t be out of place as a character in a Maeve Binchy novel. She loses some of her hard shell and starts her unlikely friendship with Emma. In the warm safety of Mollyarthur’s house, both Kate and Emma bloom. Only Kate gets pregnant. It’s not that surprising.

What is a surprise is Emma’s response to the situation. She wants to live with Kate and have the two of them raise the baby on their own. Emma’s even willing to have people think Kate’s baby is her own. Kate has her own plans. But what Kate ultimately does (marriage to the baby’s father) sets her on a doomed path. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that Kate will follow her mother’s path of an unfortunate marriage with too many children too fast and not enough money.

But as Kate marches towards her fate, Emma’s life isn’t all cream. In fact, it’s never been perfect as it seems from the outside. Emma is the oddball of her three siblings. Her family is haunted by the tragic drowning death of her younger brother. Her parents have distant relationship that is just barely holding on. She’s fortunate enough to come from a well-connected family and can find a job and rise in the ranks of her uncle’s supermarket business. She’s not popping out a baby every year by a dim-witted husband in slum rooms and dodging the landlord. But she has her own tragedies including her part in the one that nearly destroys both her and Kate.

Emma means well. She has a core of caring and compassion that with care and training would make her a wonderful child welfare worker like her mentor and father figure Johnny Jordan. But Emma hasn’t trained as child welfare worker, she blinded by guilt, money, privilege and friendship. Deep in her heart of hearts, Emma knows Kate is on the same path as her mother, turning the child who forced her into an ill-considered and ill-fated marriage into a whipping boy. The point when Emma sees a burn on Kate’s son made with a poker by Kate and doesn’t scoop that little boy up is the moment you want to smack Emma upside the head for not saving him. You want to tell her that betraying the bonds of friendship with Kate is worth it if it means saving Kate’s son. Or Kate herself.

Kate and Emma is not an easy read. It’s not a fun frolic with comic episodes. If you want that sort of Monica Dickens’ book, pick up One Pair of Hands. There are parts that will make you cry. You’ll wish the horrors of Kate’s life would end. If you’re me, you’d want to know more about Mollyarthur and Johnny Jordan. And you’ll want to thank the person who whined about Monica being so obsessed with the welfare of horses over children and sent her down the path to writing Kate and Emma.