Family Travels From Ireland: A Tale of Survival

Inishbofin
On Galway Bay

Book: Galway Bay (2009)by Mary Pat Kelly, Grand Central Publishing

A GUEST POST by Kerry Dexter

“We didn’t all die. Some of us escaped, one reaching back for the next… we saved ourselves…”

Those words of Honora Keely Kelly, born in 1822 in the west of Ireland, form the core around which the ideas in the novel Galway Bay circle. Honora was a real person, whose words came down her family to her great great granddaughter, Mary Pat Kelly.

Taking readers back in time through her imagination, the younger Kelly begins when her great great grandmother was a young woman in a fishing family on Galway Bay, just on the point of meeting the man who would become her husband, Michael Kelly.

The year is 1839, in the ‘before times,’ the years before the Great Hunger. The harsh attitudes and uneasy relations between Irish people and the English who owned almost all the land in Ireland at that time come into play even as Honora and Michael marry, entangling her family and her older sister Maire with the local landowners while at the same time strengthening the bond between the two sisters, a bond that will be tested and tried but stay central through the story, as two women with differing approaches to life face hardship, hunger, joy, and that central fact of nineteenth century Ireland, emigration.

The Irish famine memorial in Boston
Irish Famine Memorial in Boston MA

Kelly sees the events of famine times through Honora’s and Maire’s eyes as wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, and members of a community whose differences and connections come into sharp relief as people face unprecedented hardship and hunger. One of the strengths of Kelly’s writing is her ability to make secondary and even passing characters vivid, while keeping the tale centered by Honora’s and Maire’s thoughts and experiences.

 

When they finally take the decision to set out for Amerikay, it’s not without regret and not without danger. Fetching up at the bustling port of New Orleans, they  head north to Chicago, where they believe Michael’s brother Patrick, a rebel leader in Ireland, has settled.

Patrick does return to the story several times, and to powerful effect, but in Chicago in the days before the War Between the States, the sisters are on their own as they and their older children find work, and friends, and prejudice and hardship aplenty as they face unsettled and changing conditions.

The story follows Honora and Maire and their children as their sons go off to fight in the war, and old friends and enemies from Ireland reappear in their new country, and as they face building lives in Chicago. They must choose what of the family life and old ways and old stories to keep what to change, and how to pass all that on.

Honora and her family visit the Chicago Exposition of 1893. Honora welcomes the prosperity and growing acceptance of Irish people, but she also thinks of those left behind, and she has the bittersweet experience of seeing Irish life in the before times shown as exhibits. As the story ends, Honora’s granddaughter, whose real life counterpart became Mary Pat Kelly’s cousin, asks Honora to tell her stories of the real Ireland, the one across the sea.

Will this book make you want to visit Galway, or Chicago? It might, although it’s certainly not a scenic travelogue on the west of Ireland or the history of the Second City. It will make you care about the characters and want to keep reading. As someone who’s been immersed in Irish history and stories most of my life, I’ll say that Kelly gets the facts right and the tone of the history right as well, which I’ve found is not all that common in fiction about Ireland. She also, in a subtle point, gets the cadence of the language right, and has a natural inclusion of words in Irish now and then also.

Galway Bay may or may not get you thinking about going to Ireland. It may very well get you thinking about your own family’s stories, though, what you’ve heard and what you’re passing along.

Kerry Dexter is an expert on the music of Ireland and Scotland, and many of the musicians of the United States as well. Follow her at Music Road. Thank you Kerry, for bringing your knowledge of Ireland to this review of a book that obviously touched you deeply.

The Photographs are used courtesy of Creative Commons and were obtained through Flickr. Click on the photos to learn more about the photographers.

Readers–are you gathering family stories? Where did your family come from? Have you ever traveled to Ireland to trace your own family?

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About Vera Marie Badertscher

A freelance writer who loves to travel. When she is not traveling she is reading about travel. When she is not reading or traveling, she is sharing with the readers of A Traveler's Library, or recreating her family's past at Ancestors In Aprons . She has written for Reel Life With Jane, Life is a Trip and other websites. Also co-author of a biography, Quincy Tahoma, The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist. Contact Vera Marie by e-mail.

9 thoughts on “Family Travels From Ireland: A Tale of Survival

    1. Chicago is my favorite city. If you can get to Ireland, DO! The prices are better there now than they’ve been for years. Unfortunately for us, we went when they were high!

  1. I love family history. I only wish I appreciated it more when my grandparents were still around. It’s all like putting together a giant puzzle, and feels a little “sleuthish”. I went out to meet my grandmother’s nephew once and learned so much. The different perspective was fascinating!
    .-= Margo hopes you will read blog ..Postcard from Aix en Provence =-.

    1. That’s the problem with genealogy. Generally, we don’t develop an interest until we’re older and our “knowing” ancestors are gone. The moral of the story. Whether your kids and grandkids are interested or not–tell them the stories–over and over–and write them down or record them. They’ll be glad you did.

  2. A definitely ‘need to read book’- you’ve done an excellent job reviewing it.

    I have pictures of my relatives at the 1893 Exposition- it is interesting to think how many people crossed paths at that Exposition without even knowing it.

    1. Wow! Like, your family and Richard’s family could have been buying ice cream at the same stand! Or riding on the Ferris Wheel together.

  3. so interesting! i think that any family history is interesting, and can tell you much about a place (and also, how they handle adversity!). great review!
    .-= jessiev hopes you will read blog ..WritingHorseback =-.

  4. In researching my family, I discovered they too landed in the Port of New Orleans (although in a later period). And I have a written description of the 1893 Exposition by ancestors.

    Thanks for sharing Honora’s work!

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