My interest was caught by Out of Ireland when I saw it was about the Irish Republican Brotherhood which arose to fight for Irish independence from Britain.
The novel tells the story of an Irish family struggling to survive after the death of their patriarch. The eldest son will inherit the farm, along with the requirement to hand over a percentage of the crop to the English landowner. The daughter, Eileen, is an intelligent sixteen-year-old with a love of books, who is forced into an arranged marriage with a man who has lost his beloved wife and son. She does not love her withdrawn husband, but takes on her yoke dutifully. When she births a son, he becomes the shared love of the family.
The younger son is involved with the Irish Republican Army, fighting for Irish independence from Britain. He is also hopelessly in love with the landowner’s daughter. When she finds a gun he has hidden in the stall of her horse, marking him a rebel, he flees Ireland, first for London, then to New York City. In America, he seeks to join the Clan na Gael, ex-pat Irish who send money and arms back home to support the cause. Seeking advancement, he moves to St. Louis, MO, where he becomes embroiled in a crime syndicate claiming to support the Irish cause.
Crop failures impel Eileen and her family to follow her brother to America. The depredations and unsanitary conditions of steerage, chillingly rendered, culminates in tragedy for Eileen. Life in America has additional challenges for the family, and more sorrow comes their way. Eileen joins her brother in St. Louis to start anew.
I was impressed by the descriptions of daily life in Ireland, well weaving in the complicated political situation. The personal story was engaging and poignant. The ending was perhaps a little too sweetly wrapped up for me, but will satisfy romantics. It was an enjoyable read.
I received a free egalley through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
Out of Ireland
by Marian O’Shea Wernicke
Pub Date April 25, 2023
She Writes Press
ISBN: 9781647423995
from the publisher
In the late 1860s in Bantry, Ireland, sixteen-year-old Eileen O’Donovan is forced by her family to marry an older widower whom she barely knows and does not love. Her brother Michael, at age nineteen, becomes involved with the outlawed Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret organization dedicated to the violent overthrow of British rule in Ireland. Their fates intertwine when they each decide to emigrate to America, where both tragedy and happiness await them.
An exciting coming-of-age story of a brother and sister in an Ireland still under the harsh rule of the British, Out of Ireland brings alive the story of our ancestors who braved the dangers of immigration in order to find a better life for themselves and their families.
about the author
MARIAN O’SHEA WERNICKE is the author of the debut novel Toward That Which is Beautiful (She Writes Press, 2020). She has also published a memoir about her father called Tom O’Shea: A Twentieth Century Man.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to an Irish Catholic family, she entered the convent of the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood at age sixteen and spent eleven years as a nun before leaving the convent. Later, she met and married Michael Wernicke, an electrical engineer from Pensacola, Florida. Wernicke earned a master’s degree in English from the University of West Florida and went on to become a professor of English at Pensacola State College for twenty-five years. Upon her retirement from college teaching, Wernicke began her new life as full-time writer in 2010. She and her husband now live in Austin, Texas
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