Book of the Week (11/19/2018)

Norah: The Making of an Irish-American Woman in 19th Century New York by Cynthia Neale (Tucson, AZ: Fireship Press, 2013).

Scant historical attention has narrowly defined the Irish immigrant woman. And yet the rate of economic and social progress of Irish women far exceeded other immigrant women ethnicities. Norah McCabe heartbreakingly and quixotically stumbles and falls into her real self in this coming-of-age, adventurous, romantic, historical novel.

When she strives to strip herself of her impoverished past through such manifold schemes as buying her own used clothing store, 'A Bee in Your Bonnet' and promenading in Paris finery, she experiences corruption, exploitation, and enchantment in a city that is forever mythic and magical. Norah McCabe joins a rebel Irish organization to free Ireland from British rule, writes for an Irish newspaper, undergoes love's transformation, and suffers a ship wreck.

She seeks to understand the feminist movement, but ultimately is unable to cross the chasm between herself as an Irish immigrant woman and Protestant feminist ideology. The terrors and questions of life strike her down with mental incapacity and loss. Her solitary freedom is the colorful warp and weft in the fabric of who she has become -- an Irish-American woman.-- Author's website

Join NH author Cynthia Neale at The Bookery in Manchester on Friday, December 14, 2018 from 7:00pm – 8:30pm!