Thirteen-year-old Mary Agnes Coyne, forced from her home in rural Ireland in 1886 after being accused of incest, endures a treacherous voyage across the Atlantic alone to an unknown life in America. From the tenements of New York to the rough alleys of Chicago, Mary Agnes suffers the bitter taste of prejudice for the crime of being poor and Irish.
After moving west to Colorado, Mary Agnes again faces hardships and grapples with heritage, religion, and matters of the heart. Will she ever find a home to call her own? Where?
Date Published: 10th December 2024 (Paperback) / 11th March 2025 (Audiobook)
Run Time: 9 hours and 39 minutes
With too little time in the day, and too little food to pass around, Mary Agnes Coyne is often overlooked in her family. That is, until her older brother begins to pay her too much attention, and she can’t get her mother to listen to her side of the story.
Sent away overseas to escape the overbearing influence of the rumours of incest, Mary Agnes finds herself alone on a journey across the world from rural Ireland, all the way to America, to start a new life far away from home.
Despite being very young, Mary Agnes takes the journey in her stride. She often finds herself in the company of people she knows she cannot necessarily trust, and yet she longs so desperately for a friend to accompany her along the way. She greatly desires guidance, and yet despises when others try to tell her what to do. Making her way along the treacherous voyage across the Atlantic, and then through New York to make her way towards her family in Chicago, Mary Agnes faces many challenges. Her reactions to each roadblock she encounters are engulfed with the maturity she has been forced to quickly grow into, but still remain tinged with the childlike wonder and fears of a thirteen-year-old girl. She is a very complex character, for she faces a lot of challenges at a very young age, but her emotional maturity is restrained by the youth she still possesses.
The dangers that Mary Agnes faces are portrayed with an intricacy that makes you genuinely fear for her safety as she traverses the unknown. On multiple occasions, her life seems to be hanging in the balance of her decisions, and dependent on the leniency of those around her. There are times you physically can’t stop reading, for fear of Mary Agnes’ safety, and because you simply can’t step away without knowing that she is safe. This book definitely keeps your attention as you read, for Mary Agnes is never entirely settled and safe, and there is always something dark lurking around the corner, just waiting for her to feel secure before stirring everything up and sending her into turmoil.
This novel certainly highlights the difficulties that the Irish faced, not only in Ireland, with a severe lack of food, and poverty keeping people from being able to keep their families sufficiently fed, but also in America, where the Irish are seen as inferior, and people would rather hire anyone else instead of someone from Ireland. The discrimination Mary Agnes faces on a daily basis in America, where she finds herself ignored and disbelieved at every turn, echoes the life she has escaped in Ireland, wherein even her own mother had little time for her. The turmoil caused by finding herself looked down on and turned away, based simply on what part of the world she came from, weighs heavily on Mary Agnes. She travelled to America with the dream of going to university, but the world she finds there is much more prejudiced than she expected, and the challenges she faces mean the world closes off to her, rather than opening up more opportunities.
I truly enjoyed listening to the audiobook of this novel. The accent of the narrator certainly draws you deeper into the story, immersing you completely in Mary Agnes’ life. With all the twists and turns, and different situations that Mary Agnes finds herself in, the story is engaging, and one you don’t want to put down and walk away from.
A native New Yorker, Ashley E. Sweeney is the multi-award-winning author of four novels, The Irish Girl, Hardland, Answer Creek: A Novel of The Donner Party, and Eliza Waite. She graduated from Wheaton College in Norton, Mass. with a degree in American Literature and American History and spent her career as a journalist and educator before turning to writing full-time. When she is not chained to her writing desk, Sweeney is an avid gardener, art quilter, and mosaic artist. She lives in the Pacific Northwest and Tucson.
Website • Facebook • Goodreads • Instagram
GIVEAWAY!
