The Irish Girl
Opening in Galway, Western Ireland in May 1886, this novel follows the story of Mary Agnes Coyne as she emigrates to America. It follows her throughout her teenage years, from starving child to widowhood. While it is fiction, the author relies extensively on oral history and memorabilia from her grandmother, whose mother’s story this is.
We meet Mary Agnes as an unloved child in a large family, being sexually abused by her brother. She finds refuge in the home of her grandparents, Festus the fisherman and Grace, his wife, who provide her with some education and the money to cross the Atlantic.
The crossing holds enough horrors for a lifetime, but worse is the arrival in New York, where her beautiful auburn hair is shorn to the scalp by the immigration barber. However, she finds help and support from Irish families almost as poor as her own, to carry her forward to her aunt in Chicago.
From there, her life takes many twists as she travels to Colorado Springs and eventually even further. However, the novel’s strength lies in its deep, emotionally charged descriptions of Irish immigrants’ quest to become established in America. It brings to life the extreme poverty in New York tenements (still better than poverty in rural Ireland at the time) and the contempt shown to the Irish. Support comes from other Irish families even as they themselves lack food.
The selection and portrayal of details and the emotion they generate drive home the immediacy of the immigrant experience. The author shares encounters, perceptions and feelings of one young woman facing exceptional difficulties. She makes us feel part of that life and those times.
