The Irish Dresser, A Story of Hope during The Great Hunger (An Gorta Mor, 1845-1850) YA
During the Irish Famine from 1845 to 1850 over a million people perished due to hunger and fever. Thousands of ships brought more than two million Irish people to North America in search of food. The Irish Dresser is the saga of the McCabe family who struggle to survive during this difficult time. When thirteen-year-old Nora McCabe crawls into the old dresser that sits next to the hearth holding a few pieces of her mother’s china, she dreams of luscious cakes and fairies as hunger pains grip her. It is in the dresser that Nora finds hope when her father declares they must leave their beloved Ireland for America. Hidden in the dresser aboard the ship traveling to a new land, Nora lives an adventure that transforms her life and turns hope into a reality.
The Irish Dresser is an exciting, entertaining, and highly recommended story of taking risks and facing new challenges for the sake of hope.
—Midwest Book Review
Hope in New York City, The Continuing Story of The Irish Dresser YA
This sequel continues the saga of Nora McCabe and her family now dwelling in New York City where they encounter poverty, violence, and racism as Irish Catholics and immigrants. Desperately homesick, Nora vows to save money and return to her homeland of Ireland. She becomes a newsboy, meets Walt Whitman, visits Barnum's Museum, and experiences an adventure. The Astor Opera House Riot of 1849 occurs and her father disappears. Will Nora return to Ireland? Or can she stay and maintain her spirit while finding the true meaning of home? Hope in New York City is a story of immigration and the struggle to become an American in the midst of prejudice and hardship. It is a story of questioning where home is and learning that true belonging endures in the human spirit as well as in the love of family and friends.
This novel is full of convincing historical detail. Young readers should enjoy getting to know a courageous and engaging teen-aged heroine, and they will learn a great deal about the Irish immigrant experience.
—Historical Novels Review
Norah, The Making of an Irish-American Woman in 19th-Century New York
Norah McCabe defies the roles and limitations of her race and gender, throwing off the washer woman domestic's apron to become someone as worthy as any Yankee Protestant woman. Norah stumbles and falls into her real self in this evocative, adventurous, romantic, historical novel. She strives to strip herself of an impoverished past and experiences corruption, exploitation, and enchantment in a city that is forever mythic and magical. Norah McCabe opens a second-hand store, joins a rebel Irish organization to free Ireland from British rule, writes for an Irish newspaper, falls in love, and suffers a ship-wreck. She also attends the Seventh Annual Women’s Rights Convention, but ultimately is unable to cross the chasm between herself as an Irish immigrant woman and Protestant feminist ideology. Norah is the story of a woman who confronts prejudice, violence, and greed in a city that mystifies and helps mold her into becoming an Irish-American woman.
Make no mistake, although at times the language is breathtakingly lyrical, Cynthia Neale tells it like it was, grit and all. ~Deborah Swift, Author of The Lady's Slipper and The Gilded Lily
The Irish Milliner
The Irish Milliner continues the saga of Norah McCabe in New York City during the Civil War. Norah, a single mother with a young daughter, has become a milliner and struggles to survive in tumultuous times. Norah meets Abraham Lincoln, befriends the extraordinary African-American woman, Elizabeth Jennings, and assists the Underground Railroad. She falls headlong in love with Edward M. Knox, son of the famous hat-maker, Charles Knox, but he is lace curtain Irish and she is shanty Irish. Edward joins the 69th regiment and leaves for battle. Can their love endure through class differences and war? This is a story of survival, intrigue, romance, as well as exploring the conflict of Irish immigrants thrust into a war that threatened to destroy a nation.
Cometh the hour, cometh the book. The Irish Milliner spans centuries to bring a topic as old as yesterday, as timely as to-morrow to our attention ---emigration. Neale's work, written with love and insight, reminds us that our neighbor is all mankind.
~Tim Pat Coogan, Irish broadcaster, journalist, writer and author of 1916 The Easter Rising, Michael Collins and The Famine Plot
About Cynthia Neale
