Northshire Saratoga: Maureen Brady - Tessa’s Landing
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About
Brady will discuss her historical novel, which explores the sorrow and triumph of the Irish immigrant experience of the late 1840s and celebrates how one girl's self-determination leads to survival in a new world.
In Ireland in 1846, Tessa O’Melia is sixteen and the eldest of six children. Her mother’s soup is little more than water, and her childhood best friend has died of starvation. Tessa vows never to leave her home and family, but when her father is jailed, leaving the family even more desperate, her ma boards her on a famine ship to America for a marriage of convenience. Her journey is isolating and tumultuous, but her temper and youthful curiosity carry her through.
“A marvelously imagined vision of the Irish-American emigrant experience…” —Patrick Chapman, author of The Following Year
Maureen Brady has published the novels Getaway, Ginger's Fire, Folly, and Give Me Your Good Ear; the short story collection The Question She Put to Herself; and the nonfiction books Daybreak: Meditations for Women Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Midlife: Meditations for Women, and Beyond Survival. She lives between Woodstock, New York, and New York City.