The Irish Girl - Paperback

by Ashley E. Sweeney (Author)

From multi-award-winning historical fiction author Ashley E. Sweeney comes a family saga about the Irish immigrant experience spanning New York, Chicago, and Colorado so compelling that, USA Today best-selling author Kelli Estes says, "I read this story in one sitting."

Thirteen-year-old Mary Agnes Coyne, forced from her home in rural Ireland in 1886 after being accused of incest, endures a treacherous voyage across the Atlantic alone to an unknown life in America. From the tenements of New York to the rough alleys of Chicago, Mary Agnes suffers the bitter taste of prejudice for the crime of being poor and Irish. After moving west to Colorado, Mary Agnes again faces hardships and grapples with heritage, religion, and matters of the heart. Will she ever find a home to call her own? Where?

Author Biography

A native New Yorker, Ashley E. Sweeney is the winner of the Nancy Pearl Book Award and more than a dozen other awards for her previous novels, Hardland, Answer Creek, and Eliza Waite. The Irish Girl is based on her paternal great-grandmother's story of coming alone from Ireland to America in the late nineteenth century. Sweeney lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest and Tucson.