The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison

By Meredith Jaffe

Can a wedding dress save a bunch of hardened crims? The Full Monty meets Orange is the New Black in a poignantly comic story about a men’s prison sewing circle.

Derek’s daughter Debbie is getting married. He’s desperate to be there, but he’s banged up in Yarrandarrah Correctional Centre for embezzling funds from the golf club, and, thanks to his ex-wife, Lorraine, he hasn’t spoken to Debbie in years. He wants to make a grand gesture – to show her how much he loves her. But what?

Inspiration strikes while he’s embroidering a cushion at his weekly prison sewing circle – he’ll make her a wedding dress. His fellow stitchers rally around and soon this motley gang of crims is immersed in a joyous whirl of silks, satins and covered buttons.

But as time runs out and tensions rise both inside and outside the prison, the wedding dress project takes on greater significance. With lives at stake, Derek feels his chance to reconcile with Debbie is slipping through his fingers …

A funny, dark and moving novel about finding humanity, friendship and redemption in unexpected places.

About the author:

Meredith Jaffe is the author of three novels for adults – The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison (May 2021), The Making of Christina (2017) and The Fence (2016). Horse Warrior, the first in a children’s series, was published in 2019. She also contributed a short story, Emergency Undies, to the 2019 Funny Bones anthology.

She is the Festival Director of StoryFest, held on the NSW South Coast, and regularly facilitates at other writers’ festivals and author events. Previously, she wrote the weekly literary column for the online women’s magazine The Hoopla. Her feature articles, reviews, and opinion pieces have also appeared in The Guardian Australia, The Huffington Post, and Mamamia.

ISBN: 9781460760246

Publisher: HarperCollins

Credit: https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460760246/the-dressmakers-of-yarrandarrah-prison/