The following novel, while historical fiction, is, for the most part, historically accurate. It chronicles the trials and tribulations of my Irish ancestors as told in the words of my great-grandmother, Clara Kinnie Stancil. It encompasses the years from 1850 until the early years of the 1940s. While told with deep sincerity and an eye for humor, it shares, in occasionally painful detail, Clara’s most personal account of her own experiences and our country’s many successes and frequent failures. As such it is, on occasion, deadly serious. I relate it here as faithfully as I’m able and just as it was told to me by my grandmother, Clara’s daughter, Ivy.
Ireland was all stony pastures and craggy bluffs and smelled of sea breeze and heather. So said Mither. Then came the famine. Volumes galore have been previously penned chronicling the devastating potato famine that scattered the clans of Ireland. I’ll not prolong the misery with my words.
In the summer of 1850, while the earthly remains of her mom and dad were still leaching into the rocky ground of their beloved Emerald Isle, my mither, Mariah, 15 years of age at the time, along with dozens of other bereft and grieving orphans were loaded onto sailing ships, much like unwanted cargo, and shoved off for the storied shores of America. Most sailed with little more than the tattered garments of their youth which eventually served for many as their shrouds. Fortunately for Mariah, arrangements had been made.
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