AUTHOR’S NOTE

In late July 2017, I stood near Benwee Head looking out over the North Atlantic as plump opalescent clouds dumped a chilly rain on my head. The temperature was about 58 degrees Fahrenheit, but a buffeting wind off the water made the brisk air seem much colder. To my right, the Stags of Broadhaven rose from the ocean in their jagged formation. Few visitors had ventured forth on this wild and windy day to the cliffs west of Carrowteige, Ireland, known for their breathtaking views from the numerous walking trails traversing the boggy headlands.

The experience was one of many sobering moments I experienced in Ireland while doing research for The Irishman’s Daughter. I had eaten a full breakfast at our hotel in Westport; grabbed a snack at the Ballycroy National Park visitor center about halfway in our travels; and, upon arrival, even purchased a to-go lunch at the local village store. I wasn’t hungry, neither was I cold, when the rain clouds raced in from the Atlantic. When the elements became too harsh I retreated to the warmth of the rental car. I was lucky to have the comforts afforded me that day. I had to remind myself that this was July—the weather was murky to say the least—the climate not exactly hospitable even for the height of summer. I imagined how hard it must have been to eke out a living on the heath in 1845, and, in the following years, to survive The Great Hunger.

Several days earlier, we had stopped at Strokestown Park in County Roscommon for a visit to the Irish National Famine Museum, where I was able to visit with John O’Driscoll, the General Manager. The museum is sobering in itself, now housed on the grounds of the former estate of Denis Mahon, a landlord assassinated during the famine years. The terrible facts about the famine are displayed in Strokestown, but my conversation with Mr. O’Driscoll confirmed something that had lurked in my mind since I had begun my research for the novel.

The Great Famine is often relegated to the dustbin of history. It’s not extensively discussed in Irish schools. Young people know it happened, but their lesson on it might be a page or two in a textbook. In fact, discussion of this almost incomprehensible disaster has been so late in coming that the famine museum didn’t officially open until 1997, 152 years after history tells us the blight began.

The Irish suffered for three reasons during the Great Famine: pain, shame, and truth. Pain from their losses and shame for not being able to stop the famine’s natural course by any means, either through scientific or governmental remedies. The truth of the matter was that the suffering population could do little about the famine through its own efforts. Planning to avert a disaster really didn’t enter the minds of the starving. They reacted as best they could. I liken it to modern-day preparations for a nuclear war. Few of us construct fallout shelters, hoard supplies, and plan for a postnuclear apocalypse. Mostly we understand that there is little we can do in the face of such a horrific and devastating occurrence.

One might think that writing a fictional account of the famine would be an easy task. Take a natural disaster, throw in pain and suffering, and somehow get your heroine to survive. But the famine is a difficult beast to conquer. The laissez-faire politics of the time, though seemingly simple, led to complex debates and crippling governmental standoffs in England and Ireland. Landlord, agent, and tenant relationships were byzantine and codified but were, in their own way, haphazardly circumvented by the growing Irish population. The laws of ownership, conacre, rent, and farming collided with the nascent methods of the industrial revolution. The life that made Ireland’s population swell prior to the famine, thanks to the nutritional benefits of the potato (the average adult ate ten to fourteen pounds a day; yes, you read that correctly), was diminishing cataclysmically under new and unforeseen circumstances. Ireland would be irreparably altered by the famine, including a devastating population loss that hasn’t recovered its mid-1840s number to this day.

According to most sources, nearly 1 million people died, possibly more, and an equal number emigrated from Ireland, with huge numbers leaving for the United States and for neighboring England and Wales. Most of those affected were poor and from the most densely populated Irish-speaking districts in the west, where death or emigration were common. Thus, the Irish language and other cultural aspects endemic to the region were diminished by this disaster. These people with little education, no money, with an overarching reliance on the potato, had no escape plans, no manner of removing themselves from the disaster other than through starvation or emigration.

Another of the sobering moments I experienced came when I fully realized the famine’s immense devastation. The famine pots used to serve soup still exist on the grounds of Westport House as a silent reminder of efforts to save a starving population. The outlines of the potato ridges that failed the people during those years still line the County Mayo hills. How can an author accurately portray the horror of that time without overwhelming the reader? It’s a tough task. Page after page of misery and gloom would swamp all but the most dedicated. But, in reality, poverty, death, and misery were what the Irish suffered. What little hope there was came in the form of friends, neighbors, and relatives looking for a miracle in their struggle to survive.

I chose to set the book in Carrowteige, a lovely village on the northwest coast of Ireland because I wanted a certain “romance” for the novel emboldened by a wild Atlantic setting. Lear House is, of course, fictional. However, the setting around it, as portrayed in the novel, is not. Because the Irish landscape changes from county to county and the crops and farming methods differ by location, I have taken some fictional liberties with those aspects. Despite that fact, I have attempted to be honest about The Great Hunger, drawing not only from history but the lives of my characters. Authors sometimes take criticism from readers for ratcheting up the stakes to what appears to be “no way” or “that couldn’t possibly happen” moments, within a fictional context, but that’s what drama is about. Briana Walsh and her family are subjected to dire circumstances, but I’ve included nothing in The Irishman’s Daughter that I felt was out of the realm of possibility. As always in my historical fiction, I’ve attempted to meld tragedy with hope.

Many thanks go out to Evan Marshall, my agent; John Scognamiglio, my editor at Kensington, for his steadfast vision; and my readers, Bob Pinsky, Michael Grenier, Heidi Cote, and Lloyd A. Meeker. Special thanks go to John O’Driscoll of Strokestown Park House and the Irish Heritage Trust, and Treasa Ní Ghearraigh of “the old school” in Carrowteige for her valuable historical and environmental insights regarding most everything about Carrowteige and County Mayo. Also of invaluable assistance were my manuscript editors, Traci Hall and Christopher Hawke of CommunityAuthors.com. Their combined efforts made this book possible.