Overview
By chance more than a century later, Bridget Connelly, who grew up in Graceville, discovers her Connemara past. As Connelly uncovers the deliberately suppressed history of her family's emigration, she exposes an old scandal that surrounded the settling of the land around Graceville, one that pitted Masons, Protestants, Germans, and Yankees against Irish Catholicsandāone that set lace-curtain Irish against the Connemara paupers. She also learns of an archbishop who was, according to farmer lore, "worse than Jesse James". In this compelling combination of history and memoir, Connelly tells stories of an epochal blizzard, a famous Irish bard, an infamous Irish woman pirate, feuding frontier communities, and an archbishop's questionable legacy. She also learns why her family tried so hard to forget Ireland.
"Bridget Connelly has a folklorist's ear for language, and she brings her characters to life as effectively as any novelist. But there is a page-turning suspense as well in the plot of this history. And there is, finally, confession and redemptionāthe admission and then the embrace of a denied past. Bridget Connelly is a born writer, and this is the book she was born to write."
Jack Miles, author ofĀ God: A BiographyĀ andĀ Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God
"What a dazzling accomplishment: meticulous scholarly research that elucidates a family mystery so compelling that I kept reading into the small hours to reach the last page.Ā Forgetting IrelandĀ is the kind of book that startles with its depth, its insight, its sheer compassion, all told in a down-to-earth voice that makes me feel that I've joined Bridget Connelly and her relations for a long and satisfying visit."
Mary Clearman Blew, author ofĀ All but the Waltz
"A wonderful book!Ā Forgetting IrelandĀ a fascinating account of a small Irish-American community on the Minnesota prairie, settled in the 1880s by immigrants from the Far West of Ireland. Yet it is also the story of how these immigrants, from feelings of shame and desires to be ārespectable,ā first &lsquoforgotā and then, generations later, recovered their memories of Ireland and of their immigrant originsārescuing the true meaning of their ancestors' experience from the āhistoryā that had been foisted on them by the powerful and their professional apologists. And that story is immensely relevant to the descendants of Irish immigrants everywhere. I loved it and I urge every American of Irish descent, and every student of Irish-American history, to read it." Kerby Miller, author ofĀ Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America
This book title, Forgetting Ireland, ISBN: 9781681341460, by Bridget Connelly, published by Minnesota Historical Society Press (March 30, 2021) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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