Trespass | General Fiction

Dawn Garisch

Phyllis, a middle-aged woman in the 1950s, finds work as a matron at a boys’ boarding school in Cape Town. Haunted by the shame she brought on herself and her family – by falling pregnant by her cousin and giving birth to a child at sixteen – Phyllis channels her longing into a life of service.

When a woman arrives to enrol her young son, Phyllis believes her to be the baby she gave up for adoption as an adolescent. In comforting Michael, who is being bullied, Phyllis finds an escape from her untenable circumstances, even though she knows what she’s doing is wrong.