Manyebook

The Keeners

The rough beauty of County Clare is seventeen-year-old Margaret Meehan’s whole world, and it is nearly perfect. Her family is well and thriving, farming Ireland’s staple crop. She expects to marry handsome Tom Riordan, raise their children, and live in a cottage across the lane from her best friend, Kitty Dooley. She has found her calling and is apprenticed to the old keener Nuala Lynch. Together they keen for the dead, wailing the grief and pain of the bereaved in hopes of healing their sorrow. Margaret’s life is full of hope, full of purpose.

But the year is 1846. The potato blight has returned. Pitiful harvests rot overnight and the people are dying. Ireland is dying. And Margaret cannot keen for an entire country.

Out of devastation, Margaret Meehan’s tale begins. Leaving her decimated family, the tragic Kitty, and the death of dreams behind, she flees with her husband, now a wanted man, to America. In Troy, New York, where pig iron, starched collars, and union banners herald the success of Irish immigrants, Margaret discovers something even more precious than a new life and modest prosperity. She finds the heart and soul of Ireland. And she finds it in the voice of... the keeners.

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 278
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9781932815153
  • Release date
  • 2005