A-Z Blogging Challenge - J is for Jenna

Jenna is the ‘heroine’ of my first ‘Mist Na Mara’ novel, Irish Inheritance. At the beginning of the story, she is an out-of-work actress, working in a coffee shop to make ends meet, and sharing a house in London with three friends. All I really knew when I started writing this book was that she inherited a house in the west of Ireland from someone she had never heard of, and her co-inheritor was also someone she’d never heard of!

Here’s the start of Chapter 1:

“A house in Ireland?” Jenna Sutton stared over the mahogany desk at the lawyer. “Someone I’ve never heard of has left me a house in Ireland?"

The white-haired lawyer peered over his steel-rimmed spectacles. “A half share of the house, Ms. Sutton. Along with a half share of what, at current exchange rates, amounts to approximately fifty thousand pounds.”

Jenna shook her head and swiped several strands of her hair back behind her ear. “I don’t understand, Mr. Moore. Why would this Helena—what did you say her name was?”

“Miss Helena Keating.”

“Why has she left me a house and twenty-five thousand pounds? How does she even know about me?”

“Ms. Sutton, I can only give you the information passed to me by the law firm of Daniel McGrath in Dublin. We were instructed to find any descendants of James Oliver Sutton—"

“My grandfather.”

“Yes, and as far as we can ascertain, you are his sole descendant. I understand your father died in an automobile accident about twenty years ago. My condolences.”

“Thanks, but I was six when he died and only have some vague memories of him.” She frowned. “Do you know what the link is between this woman and my grandfather?”

“That wasn’t part of our instructions.”

“Have you any information about her?”

Mr. Moore pushed his glasses back up his nose and flipped through the papers in the blue manila folder on his desk. “Miss Keating was born in 1920 in County Galway, Ireland, and died last year in Dalkey, near Dublin, where she has lived since 1940.”

“So she was—” She did a quick calculation in her head. “About fifteen years older than my grandfather.”

The lawyer picked up another sheet of paper. “Yes, he was born in April, 1936.”

“I wasn’t aware he knew anyone in Ireland, and I’m pretty sure he never went over there. He lived his whole life in a small village in Kent.”

She couldn’t imagine her grandfather being anyone’s toy boy either. He’d been devoted to her grandmother. So what on earth was his connection with this Irish woman?

Another thought occurred to her, and she looked at Mr. Moore again. “You said I had a half share of the house and the fifty thousand pounds.” Even saying the words seemed surreal. She hadn’t yet wrapped her mind around what the money meant. “Who gets the other half?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Sutton. I don’t have that information. The Dublin law firm is dealing with the estate. Our job was simply to—”

“Yes, okay, to find the descendants of my grandfather.”

“I’m sure Mr. McGrath will be able to tell you more when you meet him in Dublin.”

“When I meet him in—whoa, who says I’m going to meet him?”

“Mr. McGrath has suggested an appointment at two-thirty on May 10th, to be followed by a visit to the house the next day.” 

So what will Jenna discover about the house, her unknown benefactor, and her co-inheritor when she goes over to Dublin?

Irish Inheritance is currently FREE on Amazon

All my books are available from Amazon  or from Tirgearr Publishing

A-Z Blogging Challenge - H is for 'Hunger' Memorials

Although the memorials in Ireland commemorating the tragic consequences of the potato blight in the 1840s are usually known as Famine Memorials, I am using the word Hunger here. Not just because it fits with H in the A-Z Challenge, but also because the Irish words ‘An Gorta Mór’ mean The Great Hunger.

Without going into all the politics of that time, suffice to say there was actually plenty of food in Ireland even when the potato crop failed for two consecutive years. However, foodstuffs were still being exported from Ireland to England during this period, and the price of any available food increased beyond the means of the poorest section of the population.

Landowners (often English) evicted non-payers of rent, who were then faced with the choice of entering the already crowded (and disease-ridden) workhouses, doing public work such as building roads for a pittance and relying on soup kitchens, or emigrating.

There are memorials to this tragic period in hundreds of towns and villages in Ireland. Sometimes they consist of a plaque showing where a workhouse once stood, or a Celtic cross in a graveyard, or by mass graves/burial pits where thousands of victims were buried.

In my novel Irish Echoes, historian Elliot Quinn is commissioned to write an article about some of the most evocative memorials. Professional photographer Rachel Pearse agrees to accompany him, despite the contentious issues between them. Here are some of the memorials they visited.

This sculpture on Customs House Quay in Dublin shows ragged and starving people trekking along the quay to board one of the ships which would take them to Britain, or to America, Canada, or Australia. Sadly, many of them did not survive the voyage.

 

Elliot and Rachel’s first stop was at Athy in County Kildare. The original workhouse there is now a hospital, and at the entrance is a sculpture carved from bog oak, named Famine Family. It represents a final hopeless embrace, since they knew they would not see each other again once they entered the workhouse.

The workhouse in Kilkenny has been converted to a shopping centre but in the Famine Memorial Garden outside the centre is a bronze sculpture. It shows two young brothers, John and Patrick Saul, who were abandoned by their parents at the docks in Dublin. They decided to walk back to their home in Clonmel, but after trekking over 70 miles, they sought refuge in the workhouse in Kilkenny.

 

The Ennistymon memorial was erected in 1995, in memory of the victims of the Great Hunger. It is located across from a deserted workhouse, where an estimated 20,000 Irish people died, and a mass graveyard for children, who perished and were buried without coffins.

The two grey stone slabs depict workhouse doors with large iron hinges. In front of one is a sculpture of a small barefoot boy with his hands raised as if imploring to be admitted. On the other is the head of his anguished mother, two clenched hands, and an inscription.

The inscription contains the words from a note that was pinned to the torn shirt of a barefoot orphan boy, who was left at the workhouse door on the freezing cold morning of February 25, 1848.

On the shore of Clew Bay in County Mayo is the National Famine Memorial, which depicts a “coffin ship” with skeleton bodies in the rigging. Coffin ships was a term used to describethe horrendously overcrowded boats which left Ireland with emigrants fleeing the famine in dire and unhygienic conditions 

A rough stone cross in the Doolough Valley in County Mayo commemorates a tragic event in in 1849 when people in the town of Louisburgh were starving. It was rumoured that if they walked 12 miles to Delphi Lodge where the council guardians were, they would be given food. The malnourished people set out on March 30th, 1849, in atrocious weather conditions, with wind and freezing rain, many walking barefoot and with only blankets or shawls for protection. When they eventually reached Delphi Lodge the next morning, they were told the guardians could not be disturbed while they were having their lunch. When they eventually did see them, the people were sent away empty-handed and it is estimated that more than 400 people died on the fatiguing journey back through that night and into the next day.

Every year, a memorial walk from Louisburgh to Doolough is held, and often members of the Choctaw tribe take part – which brings us to this  memorial:

 

Kindred Spirits in County Cork is a memorial to the Choctaw tribe of Oklahoma, who in 1847 raised $170 from their meagre resources to send to the Irish famine relief fund. Sixteen years earlier, they had taken part in their own 500-mile ‘Trail of Tears’ when they were forced to move from their ancestral lands in Mississippi to Oklahoma. Thousands died from starvation, exposure, and disease.
Their donation to the Irish only came to light in the 1980s, but since then the links between the Choctaw and the Irish have grown, with exchange visits. Last year, the Irish contributed the majority of the $3 million raised for the Navajo/Hopi tribes who were suffering a devastating outbreak of the Covid virus.

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A-Z Blogging Challenge - D is for Dublin

Dublin has featured in nearly all my Irish novels, even though the main part of each story takes place in Clifden and Connemara on the opposite side of Ireland.

In Irish Inheritance, Jenna and Guy first meet at Dublin Airport, and again at the lawyer’s office on St. Stephen’s Green. I imagined the office to be in one of the beautiful Georgian houses that border the large park in the centre of Dublin. 

They visit the Book of Kells exhibition at Trinity College, and spend the evening together in the Temple Bar area of the city, which is full of bars and restaurants (and tourists). Later in the story they return to Dublin, or rather to Dalkey, which was originally a separate town, but is now classed as a suburb of Dublin. However, it retains its ‘small town’ atmosphere, with a medieval castle, as well as a wonderful view of Killiney Bay, one of my favourite views in Ireland.

In Irish Intrigue, Charley goes to Dublin with Jenna for a weekend. They stay at a 5 star hotel overlooking St. Stephen’s Green – and every Dubliner will know which hotel I mean even though I didn’t actually name it! They also attend a film premiere at a cinema on Upper O’Connell Street. I gave it a different name, but based it on a real cinema that does host Hollywood-style premieres!

In Irish Secrets, Kara and Ryan stay at that same hotel on St. Stephen’s Green. One day, if my Irish books ever reach the bestseller lists, I might just treat myself to a night there – at about £450 (about $600) per night. Also featured in this story is Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery, which is an amazing place, the final resting place of many of Ireland’s patriots or, as someone has said, everyone who was anyone in Irish history, as well as a million ‘ordinary’ Dubliners.

Grave of Michael Collins at Glasnevin

In Irish Echoes, Rachel and Elliot begin their week of visiting famine memorials in different parts of Ireland with this evocative sculpture on Customs House Quay. It shows starving people trekking along the quay to reach one of the infamous famine ships which they hoped would take them to a new life in America or Canada. Sadly, many of them didn't survive the voyage and the death toll was so great that the ships became known as 'coffin ships.'

 (All my books are available from Amazon  or from Tirgearr Publishing )

Dublin's Fair City

I’m continuing to feature some of the places that appear in my soon to be published new novel ‘Irish Inheritance’ –and today we're visiting Dublin. Jenna and Guy first meet at Dublin airport, visit a lawyer on St. Stephen’s Green, and then spend the rest of the afternoon and evening together.

In such a short time, they don’t see a lot of Dublin, but they do go to see the Book of Kells at Trinity College. The illuminated manuscript, considered to be Ireland’s finest national treasure, was created by Irish monks about 800 A.D. It contains the four Gospels in Latin, and is a wonderful example of medieval calligraphy and illumination.


On the way from Grafton Street (the main shopping street in Dublin), Jenna and Guy would have passed one of the city’s many statues. It’s unlikely that this one represents a real person (although some would argue differently) but she features in one of Ireland’s most well-known songs – ‘as she wheels her wheelbarrow, through streets broad and narrow, crying ‘Cockles and Mussels, alive, alive-oh’. Of course, it’s Molly Malone – or, as this statue is sometimes called, ‘The Tart with the Cart’.

They spent the evening in Temple Bar, known as Dublin’s ‘cultural quarter’, due to the photographic and artists’ studios in the area. However, it has become more of a tourist centre, regarded by the locals as having ‘ye olde Irish’ pretensions. There are plenty of bars and nightclubs in the area, as well as street performers and musicians.

On a later visit to Dublin, they crossed the River Liffey on Ha’penny Bridge, a cast iron footbridge which was built in 1816, and known originally as the Wellington Bridge (after the Duke of Wellington). Before the bridge was built, William Walsh operated seven ferries across the river. They were in bad condition, and Walsh was told either to repair them or build a bridge. He chose the latter, and was allowed to charge half a penny from anyone crossing the bridge. The toll was later increased to a one and a half pennies, but was finally dropped in 1919. Officially, the bridge is the Liffey Bridge, but is known to everyone as the Ha’penny Bridge.

What did Jenna and Guy miss seeing in Dublin? The list is probably endless, but here are some of the places I have visited in this wonderful city:

The Guinness Brewery, founded by Arthur Guinness in 1759, has an excellent exhibition (including a tasting experience!) and also one of the best views of Dublin from the Gravity Bar at the top of the building.


Kilmainham Gaol, built in 1796,  has held many famous people involved in the campaign for Irish Independence, including the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, some of whom were executed here. It has also been used as a location for several films, including The Italian Job.



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O’Connell Street is Dublin’s main thoroughfare, named after Daniel O’Connell, a nationalist leader in the early 19th century, whose statue stands at one end of the wide street. Part way along the street is the large Georgian General Post Office, which served as the headquarters of the 1916 Rising. Near the Post Office is the Spire, a stainless steel monument almost 400 feet high, erected in 2002-3, and sometimes referred to by Dubliners as ‘The Spike’ (or even ‘The Stiletto in the Ghetto').

This post would go on forever if I added all the other interesting places in Dublin. Maybe I’ll write about them in a later post.