It is August 1845. In Dublin’s Botanic Gardens, Phytophora infestans is discovered for the first time. The bacteria was to result in the Great Famine, an event of holocaust proportions that affected every man, woman and child in Ireland. England’s shame; Ireland’s tragedy.
Ellen O’Malley is one such victim. She loses her husband, is duped into going to Australia to lead a better life, leaving three of her beloved children behind. She travels aboard a coffin ship and arrives emaciated and ill with her new baby. But Ellen, a woman with an indomitable spirit, rises above her oppression and eventually returns to wreak revenge on those perpetrators of her misery.
Boston in the 1850s is the hub of the universe: gateway to America’s temples of commerce and learning; liberal, sophisticated – the very best place in all of the New World for a woman to be. There, awaiting Ellen, are the stability of a new life and Lavelle, the man who loves her.
But Ellen, desperate to shake off the Old World, is driven by her own demons to put everything at risk. And Boston, on the brink of Civil War, seems only to mirror her own conflict, to sound the knell of her own battle for survival.
A powerful and compelling tale of lives and loves dislocated, The Element of Fire captures emotions as timeless as life. And love.