Hope by Ashley Sweeney

In the dim crease of dawn, Galway’s docks clatter with stevedores, sailors, pimps, dogs. The air, laced with coal dust and smoke, reeks of rotting fish. Mary Agnes clutches her granddad’s arm as they weave through crowds swarming the wharfside, the sky leaden, threatening rain. Beyond a tangle of masts and battered hulls, a constant rumble, as the black River Corrib barrels down the narrow seaway toward the even-blacker Atlantic.

So opens the novel, The Irish Girl (She Writes Press, 2024), loosed basely on my great-grandmother’s story of coming from rural Ireland to America alone in 1886 at age thirteen. From such a foreboding opening, one might think the novel maudlin, or, worse, horror (with apologies to fans of horror!)

But no, although the novel describes in detail protagonist Mary Agnes Coyne’s trials on the sea voyage, prejudice in life in New York and Chicago, and frequent exposure to tragedy and even death, this is a novel of hope.

It is estimated that upward of four million Irish immigrants came to America in the 19th century, due mostly in part to the effects of An Gorta Mor, the time of great hunger. When a potato famine swept through Ireland in the 1840s, more than a million died and streams of Irish emigrated to United States. From 1841-1900, the population of Ireland dropped from 6.5 million to 3.2 million. 

Among those are my ancestors on both sides, the Murphy and Mulligan families on my maternal side and the Sweeneys and Coynes on my paternal side. Thanks to my late uncle, Robert E. Sweeney, I possess a treasure trove of archival material on the Sweeneys. As to the Coynes, there is far less, but I am indebted to my father, Gerald F. Sweeney, and distant cousins Kathleen Bradshaw and Lawrence Coyne for additional information.

It is with this information that my husband and I set out for rural County Galway last fall to research the Coyne clan and stand on the spot from where Mary Agnes left Ireland. After a week in Dublin with friends and a fun five-day tour of Southern and Western Ireland, Michael and landed in always-rainy Galway to begin our trip to rural Connemara.

As an author devoted to historical accuracy (sometimes painfully realistically), I contend there is no substitute for standing on the ground where a novel takes place. Imagine my sensory overload standing on the plot of ground where my great-grandmother grew up at Dawros Beg (pronounced Dahv-ros Beg), a peninsula outside Letterfrack, Connemara, County Galway. 

The wind! The driving rain! The stinging cold! And to think Mary Agnes grew up here, without any modern comforts, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no shoes. To make the experience even more realistic, Michael and I rented an authentic Irish cottage for a week overlooking the Atlantic. 

During our stay, in addition to contracting COVID for the first time, we experienced the lashing of a tropical storm, appropriately named “Agnes.” The wind howled and the rain blew sideways for four straight days as we huddled in the cottage with a wood fire, tea, whiskey, and books. In geologic time, the experience was no different than Mary Agnes’s, other than some amenities, although don’t get the idea that we lived in the lap of luxury. Yes, we had electricity that flickered on and off and an indoor toilet and shower, but we climbed a wooden rung ladder through a trap door to our sleeping space and used a chamber pot at night to avoid falling from the second floor in the dark. And, despite the warmth of the fire in the main room, the rest of the cottage was damp and drafty. 

While there, at the cottage, I felt close to Mary Agnes, and to all my Irish ancestors (We have never left ya, girl, they say. And we never will.) It’s hard to explain, even for a author. But it was palpable.

Which brings me to hope. Hope is defined as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen” (Oxford Dictionary). 

Think back to being thirteen. What hopes did you have at that time? To go to college? To travel? To have a family? To be financially independent? To be loved?

These are the hopes Mary Agnes had as a young girl in Ireland, and no doubt the hopes of your grandmothers and great-grandmothers as they traveled to America from Italy or Russia or Sweden or France. When Mary Agnes arrives in America, she faces obstacles and prejudice, disappointment and tragedy, also akin to what your foremothers might have experienced as they arrived in a foreign land. But hope prevails, and the novel ends on an anticipatory note—although I never wrap everything up in a perfect bow for readers.

It’s like life, often messy and complicated, with unknowns at every dawn. But what gets us through is our through-line of ancestry, deep resolve for a better future, and, ever and always, hope. 

The Irish Girl: A Novel

From multi-award-winning historical fiction author Ashley E. Sweeney comes a family saga about the Irish immigrant experience spanning New York, Chicago, and Colorado so compelling that, USA Today best-selling author Kelli Estes says, “I read this story in one sitting.”

Thirteen-year-old Mary Agnes Coyne, forced from her home in rural Ireland in 1886 after being accused of incest, endures a treacherous voyage across the Atlantic alone to an unknown life in America. From the tenements of New York to the rough alleys of Chicago, Mary Agnes suffers the bitter taste of prejudice for the crime of being poor and Irish.

After moving west to Colorado, Mary Agnes again faces hardships and grapples with heritage, religion, and matters of the heart. Will she ever find a home to call her own? Where?

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Category: On Writing