Winner of the 2022 Eric Hoffer First Horizon Book Award
Winner of the 2022 Eric Hoffer Historical Fiction Book Award
Winner of the 2022 IPPY Awards Best Regional Fiction, U.S. Northeast, Bronze Medal
The gruesome truth hung in the air, and none of us wanted to go near it. Not yet.
Ireland, 1848. Fourteen-year-old Rosaleen watches her mother die. Her country is reeling from the great potato famine, which will ultimately kill more than one million people. Driven by a promise and her will to survive, Rosaleen flees her small coastal town.
She eventually arrives in America at the birth of the industrial revolution and is filled with hope and a new sense of independence. Yet the more Rosaleen becomes a part of this new world, the more she longs for a community she lost and a young man she can't forget.
Through a series of both heartwarming and tragic events, Rosaleen learns that she can't outrun the problems that come along with being Irish. And maybe, she doesn't want to.