The Irish Are Everywhere

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Happy St. Patrick's Day, readers!

My heroine Ursula of Mercies of the Fallen and Ursula's Inheritance found her Irish born champion in Rowan Buckley, an Irish transplant to Canada during An Gorta Mor, (The Great Hunger 1845-1850.)

Rowan was a member of an Irish diaspora (Diaspóra na nGael), which describes people like me, and I suspect many of you-- ethnic Irish descendants who live outside the island of the saints and sinners. There are over 100 million of us...more than fifteen times the population of Ireland itself!

Did you know:

* It has been suggested that St. Brendan visited Bermuda on one of his legendary voyages. The beautiful Bermudiana is a flower that grows only there...and around Lough Erne and Lough Melvin in County Fermanagh, and is known as Feilistrín gorm, or Blue-eyed grass.

*  On the Bridge of Tears (Droichead na nDeor) in West Donegal, Ireland, family and friends of emigrants would accompany them as far as the bridge before saying goodbye, while the emigrants would continue on...

* Many of the Wild Geese (expatriate Irish soldiers of the 16th, 17th and 18th century) who had gone to Spain and their descendants continued on to its colonies in South America. Many rose to positions in the Spanish governments there. In the 1820s, some helped liberate the continent. Bernardo O'Higgins was the first Supreme director of Chile. When Chilean troops occupied Lima during the War of the Pacific in 1881, they put in charge Patricio Lynch, whose grandfather came from Ireland to Argentina and then moved to Chile. Other Latin American countries that have Irish settlement include Puerto Rico and Colombia.

Angels in the Architecture

 

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Happy New Year, dear readers.

I love New York City. Since I was a child, it has always been a place of mystery and wonder. On our way to visit my grandparents’ apartment, I would stare in wonder at the tall buildings, vast avenues, steam coming out of worksites. My parents would point out the West Side tenements where each had been born. My father would give us a nickel so we could ride the Staten Island Ferry and get a close look at the waters around and Miss Liberty shining her light from the harbor. Free Shakespeare performances in Central Park and my first Broadway show made me a lifelong lover of theater.

Angel in the architecture, New York City

The last time I was there was Valentine’s Day, 2020.  My husband and I traveled down by train from our home in Vermont to see our son performing in an off-Broadway play. The play was about love in all its forms and complexity and was the perfect date. Afterward, we walked to Greenwich Village and had a lovely late night meal together. We should do this more often, I thought.

Back in out tiny hotel, I looked across the street from our 8th floor window and noticed a building had been converted from its previous incarnation as a church. Some of the details remained intact, including a beautiful concrete angel, recently sand blasted clean. There are wonderful surprises like that, even in this city that is forever re-inventing itself.

I’ve thought about that angel often over this year that’s followed, here in our quarantined Vermont. That angel has looked over a city crippled by a deadly virus (which our son suffered with and survived) a shut down, and political mayhem. 

I hope she will guide us all to follow the better angels of our nature.

Kindness Never Wasted

coming in April!

shortlisted for Laramie and Chatelaine Awards!

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Located in the middle of the St. Lawrence River lies the island Grosse Isle. It was once the main point of entry for immigrants coming to Canada. On the island was a quarantine station. The year 1847 (“Black ’47”) was the worst year of the Irish Great Hunger, brought in approximately 110,000 migrants to Canada. Nearly 90,000 landed at Grosse Isle. 

An Irish Farewell, 1840

About one out of every six migrants did not make it through that year. They died in the filthy holds of “coffin ships,” in crowded tents on the quarantine islands or in port cities. Most succumbed to typhus.

newspaper account

By year’s end, thousands of children had become orphans. No one is sure of the exact number as many were informally placed out and left no trace in the records. 

Over half the orphans were placed with French Canadian families, many in the countryside. Some were treated merely as farm hands. But some of the adoptive parents were self-sacrificing and expressed love and respect while they urged the children to keep their Irish surnames and preserve their Irish heritage. The descendants of these Irish Canadians have become accomplished in many walks of life. They include artists and musicians, politicians, writers and scientists.

memorial to the fallen on Grosse Isle

My friend Paulinus Healy, chaplain of the Toronto Airport, first told me the infinitely sad story of the fallen of Grosse Isle and the wonderfully redemptive one of the French Canadian families who took the orphans into their homes and hearts. “You’ll write about it some day, “ Paulinus predicted.  I have in my April 2020 historical novel, Mercies of the Fallen.  Sergeant Rowan Buckley is a Grosse Isle orphan taken in by three French Canadian sisters. When the American Civil War breaks out, he decides to head south with his neighbor, a former slave, to join the Union army.

I hope I have captured the character of fallen people, who, if shown kindness, return mercy to the world exponentially.

PS -- As February is romance month, Books We Love authors are offering excerpts from their contemporary romances, romantic suspense and paranormal romances on the BWL free reading club. Check it out and join today at https://www.facebook.com/groups/BooksWeLovebookclub/

Romance Is My Passion

To find my BWL novels...

What is Romance?  Is it simply a love story?  While all romances contain a love story, not all love stories are romances. Romances are a genre of fiction. As any other genre, it has conventions, just as mysteries, science fiction or westerns do. 

I love reading good romance novels.  Why? How?  With a grateful nod to poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Let me count the ways….

 

1  Romances have no boundaries.

Romance novels can go back centuries, spanning right through the decades to the present, and into the future. Why? Because love hasn’t changed over the years, plots and genres from historical, to young adult, to paranormal, to romantic drama, comedy. adventure, to western to suspense.  All genres live inside romance.

Nowadays we can read much more about the varieties of love thanks to the LGBTQ community and erotic fiction. At the end of the day:  love is love.

2 Romances can teach 

I know a few things about women’s roles in the first and second World Wars, how women got away with posing as male soldiers in the Civil War…Also how to run a b&b and catch a thief.  Would I pick up a non-ficton book or manual on these subjects? Maybe not.  But through my love of romance novels, I am now far better informed on many subjects. If well-written, the product of the author’s research is in a romance fiction. If a book is set in the 1940s, for example,  you’ll find out the news, slang, what type of clothes people were in fashion, what technology people used to travel and communicate. And it’s all delivered painlessly, as part of a great story. I always value a well researched, informative style of writing, in any genre.

3 Romances feature strong women

Do you like to read about shrinking violets?  With women strictly in the background getting coffee? About women with no voice or opinions?  Well, romance is not your cup of tea.  A good romance novel will show the strengths of a woman, even against adversity. Women will never be stereotyped as weak or “arm candy” or insignificant in romance novels. They are HER journey’s story.

4 Oh, there’s….the sex

Yes, except for in the sweet, close-the-curtain variety, there is, as in life, sex in romance novels. And, as in life, when it comes with consent, and in the right moments, it pulses with joy and wonderful variety!

5 Also relationships

What makes a good relationship? That is a complex question with many answers that are right for different people. By reading romance novels we can compare to our life relationships. That’s why it’s always puzzled me why men who keep loudly wondering “what do women want?” don’t read romance novels.  The answer lies within, fellas. 

6 And always, hope.

Anything  wrong with a little daydreaming of the perfect mate?  How else do we to know what to look for in life?

7 Romances make us laugh, cry…and wait!

That is Charles Dickens’ prescription for good storytelling.  We all like a laugh. There is often humor in romance. The laugh out loud kind, the clever wit, the  sharp one-liners. And who doesn’t like a good cry? Sadness and setbacks get our emotions stirring. And mixing in in a good galloping plot full of conflict, make us wait for ….

8.  Oh, those happy endings

Finally there is that much-derided guaranteed “happy ever after. “  Yes, you’ll find happy endings in romances as sure as the murder will be solved in mysteries and the cattle delivered in westerns. If the romance is good, that happy ending will be well-earned and worth the wait!