Emigrant Dreams

Anne O'Brien is a woman in turmoil. She believes that her husband, Fergus, is cheating on her back in Ireland; she believes that Charles Matthews will boost her ego and fulfil her sexual longings. But Matthews, an English professor at the American college where Anne is writer-in-residence, is both more and less than he seems. So is the elderly man in the cream-coloured suit who is determined to tell Anne about a murder. In this absorbing, powerful and funny novel, Mary Rose Callaghan goes to the heart of the experience of being Irish in the twentieth century. Anne O'Brien, though reared in Ireland, is the daughter of Irish immigrants to America. Her struggle to come to terms with the two worlds that have formed her results in a flight that becomes an odyssey through the secrets and silences of the past. Anne O'Brien's search for the truth brings her back to the bruising, volatile world of New York in the early years of this century, the crucible that shaped so many new Americans - and new Irish.