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We started a monthly Irish and Celtic book club! Book selections will feature fictional and nonfictional novels with Irish or Celtic theming and/or written by authors from the Celtic nations, Irish America, and East Coast Canada. Join us in celebrating and in supporting Irish and Celtic literature. Join our Facebook group below to participate in discussions and to stay updated.
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From the Booker longlisted author and an Irish Times No. 1 bestseller—a searing, jubilant novel about four generations of women and the stories that bind them.
This is a story about family, about all of the things it should be—and sometimes isn't.
In Nenagh, County Tipperary, four generations of Aylward women live and love. The head of the family, Nana, is a woman who has buried two sons and whose life has been the family farm. Her daughter-in-law, Eileen, is estranged from her own parents, having 'shamed' them and given birth to Saoirse. And then there's Saoirse herself, eavesdropping on lives she cannot comprehend. It is only when they must battle for the inheritance of Dirt Island—a narrow strip of land adjacent to Eileen's childhood home—that they truly understand the roots that bind their lives together.
About the Author
Donal Ryan is a novelist and short story-writer from Nenagh, Co. Tipperary. He has won several national and international awards for his fiction and has twice been nominated for the Booker Prize. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and translated into over twenty languages. Donal is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Limerick, where he lives with his wife, Anne Marie, and their two children. The Queen of Dirt Island is his seventh book and was an instant number one bestseller in Ireland.
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Saoirse is a powerful novel set between the United States and Ireland about a woman who runs from her traumatic past and the secrets she carries to survive.
In Michigan, Sarah’s childhood was defined by fear and silence. As a teenager, she saw a chance to escape and took it. Now, in 1999, she is an artist living on the rugged coast of Donegal, Ireland, where she is known as Saoirse (pronounced Sear-sha)—a name that sounds like the sea and means freedom in the language of her adopted country. And free is precisely how she is finally beginning to feel. Her partner and two beloved daughters are regular subjects of her paintings, and together they have made the safe home she always longed for. But Saoirse's secrets haunt her. No one must learn of the identity she has stolen in order to survive; they cannot know of the dangers that she crossed an ocean to escape.
When her artwork wins unexpected acclaim at a Dublin exhibition, the spotlight of fame threatens to unravel the careful lies that hold her world together. Journalists and admirers begin to ask questions about the mysterious artist from Donegal, and she fears the unwanted publicity will expose all that she has done.
About the Author
Charleen Hurtubise is a novelist, essayist, and artist. She is the author of The Polite Act of Drowning, published in Ireland and the UK in 2023. Saoirse is her US debut. She holds an M.Sc. from Trinity College Dublin and an MFA in creative writing from University College Dublin, where she has facilitated creative writing seminars. The sixth sister in a family of nine, she spent much of her childhood in Michigan and her early adult years in Boston and has now lived half of her life in Ireland, which is home. Though she lives in Dublin with her Irish family, the pull of Donegal never leaves and continues to influence her drawings and writings, including Saoirse.
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CelticMKE | 1532 Wauwatosa Avenue | Milwaukee, WI 53213-2623 | Phone: (414) 476-3378 | Email: info@celticmke.com
