Why a Booktrail?
1960s: Tiger Bay has a sharp bite…
The Hiding Place
Why a Booktrail?
1960s: Tiger Bay has a sharp bite…
What you need to know before your trail
Dolores grows up in the 1960s in Cardiff’s poverty stricken Tiger Bay. She is the youngest of six daughters and her life is tainted from the start as her father had a bet before she was born, hoping that she would be a boy. He makes a bet and loses everything in the process.
Dolores grows up and sees the gambling world that brought her father to his knees. It’s a place of gaming rooms and cafes, of crumbling houses and burning secrets, and for Dolores and her sisters, their home is a dangerous place, filled equally by fear and love.
When all the sisters return to Tiger Bay for their mother’s funeral some thirty years later, it’s time for Dolores to understand the tragedy that has shaped her existence.
Travel Guide
Cardiff, Tiger Bay
The Callisto docks in Tiger Bay. The bay is called the Valletta of Britain according to the crew. It’s supposed to be a warm port but is anything but.
It’s Cardiff’s dockland district and is Wales’ oldest multi-ethnic community. Sailors and workers from over 50 countries settled here.
It was notorious during its day as being the city’s red-light district and hosting most of the gambling dens between Cardiff’s city centre and its docks. The area was largely destroyed and modernised following the 1960s.
This world here is like a microcosm of confusion and poverty. “Tiger Bay is simply a stepping stone on some long and unforeseeable journey…”
“The terrifying sense that the tapestry of past life can never be properly stitched together as the vast majority of the pieces are unreconstitutable threads.” Most of the action takes place inside a box room, in a house there and is as claustrophobic and suffering as the Cardiff Docks mud.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Hiding Place
Author/Guide: Trezza Azzopardi Destination: Cardiff Departure Time: Early 1960s
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