Mushroom Town
Oliver Onions
Paperback
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Nov. 10, 2012)
Mushroom Town reveals a powerful writer at the height of his skills. The setting of Mushroom Town is the tiny fictional hamlet Llanyglo, Wales. Llanyglo is little more than a few merchant shops, three tiny churches and some scattered dry-scrabble farms. But the tiny town has an ideal location next to the ocean, and potentially a terrific beach for water recreation of all kinds. Llanyglo catches the attention of Edward Garden, a shrewd, well-to-do English businessman. He initially brings his family to spend two weeks in a seaside cabin to bolster the failing health of his 9-year-old daughter. However, Mr. Garden has inside information about a new rail line that will soon be laid down and pass very near the hamlet, which means that this once remote, region will suddenly have easy access to the bigger cities such as Manchester and Liverpool. Mr. Garden recognizes the potential to transform tiny Llanyglo into a resort town. A major literary talent of the calibre of E.M. Forester, Thomas Hardy and W. Somerset Maugham., Oliver Onions paints for us in Mushroom Town a powerfully tragic love story between a wealthy young Englishman and a penniless Welsh gypsy woman – two people from entirely different worlds, cultures and classes – whose different circumstances will almost certainly doom their love – or will it? Originally published in 1914, Mushroom Town serves as a powerful metaphor with implications for the very soul of humanity itself.