Book Review: So Far From Home (Dear America) by Barry Denenberg

So Far From Home: The Diary of Mary Driscoll, an Irish Mill Girl, Lowell, Massachusetts, 1847 by Barry Denenberg
Dear America Diary Series
Hardcover, 170 pages
Scholastic Inc
October 1, 1997
★★★★☆

Genre: Historical Fiction, Young Adult

Source: Personal collection

In the diary account of her journey from Ireland in 1847 and of her work in a mill in Lowell, Massachusetts, fourteen-year-old Mary reveals a great longing for her family.

I picked up So Far From Home right after I came back from a trip to the Lowell Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts; I love being able to match a book with an experience! I had the opportunity to walk through some of the mills (experience a smidge of the noise created there) as well as the boarding houses where many of the girls would have lived. I wanted to see how Lowell stacked up in a novel treatment, especially one for young adults.

The novel takes on 2 topics that are nicely tied together: the first being the plight of the Irish facing famine at home that led to many choosing to flee to America, the second being how these immigrants were treated upon arrival in the United States. Mary and her family are caught up in the famine at home. Some of the family makes the tough decision to emigrate while some choose to remain at home and live through it. It was hard to think that people would choose to remain behind and continue to live in those conditions, but that was the life they knew and who knew what they would find in the new country. These concerns and arguments for and against were thoroughly explored. The ship voyage was treacherous and while I had thought about and read about the immigrant arrival experience before, So Far From Home did a great job of showing how scary that would have been; how do you find your family and figure out how to get where you are going, especially if you don’t speak the language. Mary’s experiences at the mills showed how the Irish immigrants were taken advantage of and asked to perform the more difficult and dangerous tasks. In total, I think the experience here was perfectly depicted.

One thing I didn’t like was how the book ended. It ends abruptly with Mary headed out for a new experience, which sounds like it could be rather dramatic and I thought it would have been interesting to explore that experience more. It just felt a little bit unresolved to me.

I always enjoy the bonus content included in these books as it expands on the reading experience without me needing to go do my own research. Included in this novel are images of the mills (inside and out), boarding houses, some sheet music for a lullaby that is mentioned in the novel and, what I found most interesting, the time schedules and pay scales for the mills.

Overall, this is a great novel to include for any kids learning about the industrial revolution or to expand upon a visit to the National Park. It’s sad that it’s not one of the few of the Diaries that is currently in print at this time.

Reviews of this book by other bloggers:

• Through the Looking Glass Children’s Book Reviews

Buy the Book: AbeBooks

Other Book in the Dear America Series:

A Journey to the New World

The Winter of Red Snow
[My Review]

When Will This Cruel War Be Over?

A Picture of Freedom

Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie
[My Review]

I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly
[My Review]

West to a Land of Plenty

Dreams in the Golden Country

Standing in the Light

Voyage on the Great Titanic

A Line in the Sand

My Heart is on the Ground

The Great Railroad Race

A Light in the Storm

The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow

A Coal Miner’s Bride

Color Me Dark

One Eye Laughing, the Other Weeping

My Secret War
[My Review]

Valley of the Moon

Seeds of Hope

Christmas After All

Early Sunday Morning

My Face to the Wind

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

A Time for Courage

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Survival in the Storm

When Christmas Comes Again

Land of the Buffalo Bones

Love Thy Neighbor

All the Stars in the Sky

Look to the Hills

Hear My Sorrow

I Walk in Dread

The Fences Between Us

Like The Willow Tree

Cannons at Dawn

With the Might of Angels

Behind the Masks

A City Tossed and Broken

Down the Rabbit Hole

Find Dear America series here.

 
Copyright © 2017 by The Maiden’s Court

Book Review: City of Hope by Kate Kerrigan

City of Hope by Kate Kerrigan
ARC, Paperback, 355 pages
William Morrow Paperbacks
June 25, 2013
★★★½☆☆

Genre: Historical Fiction

Source: Received from publisher for review as part of TLC Book Tours

An uplifting, inspiring and heartwarming story of a woman truly ahead of her time, City of Hope is the heart-rending but inspiring follow-up to Ellis Island

It is the 1930s and when her beloved husband, John, suddenly dies, young Ellie Hogan decides to leave Ireland and return to New York. She hopes that the city's vibrancy will distract her from her grief. But the Depression has rendered the city unrecognizable-gone is the energy and atmosphere of fun that Ellie fell in love with ten years before.

Plunging headfirst into a new life, Ellie pours all her passion and energy into running a home and refuge for the homeless. In return they give her the kind of love, support and friendship she needs to try and overcome her grief. Until, one day, someone she thought she'd never see again steps through her door. It seems that even the Atlantic isn't big enough to prevent the tragedies of the past from catching up with her.

City of Hope is the follow up to Ellis Island released in 2009. Again we see Ellie leaving Ireland behind to move to the Big City in America. Again we deal with some culture shock, but in a slightly different way that before because this time around Ellie is coming over as a wealthy woman to a Depression Era New York City. When we first begin to meet characters that we met in the first book I began to worry that it was going to be a sort of re-hash of the first book- however again I was surprised by the fact that I ended up getting a story I didn’t expect.

There is a LARGE cast of characters here – and while you may not remember who is who exactly, you get the feel of the large community that Ellie creates around her. Some characters came and went too abruptly for me to really connect with them or care about what ended up happening to them, but there were certainly those you could care about and connect with. Having such a diverse cast (diverse in SO many ways) allows there to be something for almost any reader. But Ellie is a hard character to read – I thought I knew where she was going but was disappointed with her choices toward the end of the book. I felt like everything had been leading up to this big decision and established the reader’s commitment to that decision and then she does a complete turn-around at the end – I’m not really sure she grew as a person after all of that. I don’t know that I was disappointed with her choice, per se, but more so with her wishy-washy-ness and how I felt that there was character development that didn’t really do much for me. I was actually really into Ellie’s story until about the last two chapters.

I enjoyed the new view on the Depression. Normally you see people really down on their luck, and you do see that here, but they actually try to find ways to build themselves out of it and the way they did so was interesting. The author creates a unique feel to the environment that they are living in.

The one thing I found hard to buy into was that Ellie has this endless supply of money from businesses that she built up in Ireland – but I didn’t really feel it was believable. How did what was considered a lot of money in a rural community in Ireland in pre 1930 equate to lots of wealth in New York City (even during the Depression the kinds of things she was buying would still have been expensive comparatively)?

I enjoyed the book, but wouldn’t say I loved it. I will likely read the upcoming third book because I want to know where her “big decision” ends up taking her – but I was sort of hoping it was going to resolve itself in book two.

Author Kate Kerrigan also has written Ellis Island and the third book in the series will be upcoming, Land of Dreams. Outside the series, Kerrigan has written Recipes for a Perfect Marriage. You can visit Kate Kerrigan’s website for additional information about the book. If you would like to preview the story before reading it, why not try out this excerpt of the book?

My reviews of other books by this author:

• Ellis Island

Reviews of this book by other bloggers:

• Tina’s Book Reviews
• Books in the City

You can check out the rest of the stops on the TLC Book Tour for City of Hope (I am the last stop I think).

 

Here are some choices for purchasing the book: Amazon, B&N, RJ Julia (my fav indie bookstore). 

 

Copyright © 2013 by The Maiden’s Court

Angel Island: The Experience and Virtual Tour

Until recently, I did not know anything about Angel Island and its role in the immigration story of the United States. After reading Shanghai Girls by Lisa See I learned a lot about the experience at Angel Island and wanted to know more and to share some of it with you.

Angel Island served as the initial stopping point for immigrants who wanted to enter the US from the west. The Immigration Center was active from 1910 to 1940. The experience there was much different than that at Ellis Island in New York. Angel Island’s purpose was to determine those who were coming under legal reasons and deport those back to their country of origin who could not answer the interview questions adequately.

Upon arriving at Angel Island the immigrants would be subjected to a series of interviews where they would need to correctly answer ever increasingly obscure questions about their families and hometowns. Their answers would be compared with others who had come over with them or who had come over previously and look for discrepancies. You can watch this video I have included below which shows a recent recreation of a couple of these immigration interviews. It is quite long but you can watch a portion to get an idea of how ridiculous these interviews would have been. I don’t think I could have passed these interviews myself.

Reenactment of a series of Angel Island Interrogations

While waiting to pass the interview process the immigrants would have to stay in the dormitories – sometimes for as little as a week, or sometimes for as much as a year. These were not the most comfortable arrangements. In the video below you can take a tour of the dormitories as they would have been during the active years of Angel Island.

Virtual Tour of Angel Island Immigration Station and Museum

If you happen to be traveling to the San Francisco area or live in that area, you can visit Angel Island today. It has a great number of opportunities for hiking, biking etc as well as a little historical tour. The Immigration Station now houses a museum. The museum is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 11-3 and is $5 admission for adults and $3 for youths. There are 1 hour lecture tours available for an additional $7. You can learn more about the state park here.

Most people who know of Angel Island know of it as the immigration center – but it had a history both before and after that period. It served as a military center, a quarantine station, camp for prisoners during WWII, and as a state park. Here is a timeline of Angel Island history.

If you want to hear first-hand stories of the Angel Island experience you can read or listen to some of these interviews.

Or if you are looking for some reading recommendations, check out some of these:

• Barde, Robert Eric. Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger Ships, Exclusion, and Angel Island. Westport: Praeger, 2008.
• Fanning, Bramwell and Wong, William. Images of America: Angel Island. Arcadia Publishers, 2007.
• Lee, Erika and Judy Yung. Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Or you can get a more complete listing here.

Have any of you been here before? Do you know anyone that had to pass through Angel Island to immigrate here?

 

Copyright © 2013 by The Maiden’s Court