March is Irish month on Historical Romance Review and I’m starting one that brings the Irish heart to the fore. It’s a great story set in the time of Ireland’s famine (1845-1852) and the people’s rising for freedom from the English who had virtually enslaved them.
The story begins in 1840 when Grace is a young girl and happy with her family and her cousins. First she loses her mother and her brother is injured in an accident, leaving her father, Patrick, a broken man.
Less than a decade later, Grace’s father arranges a marriage to an English squire, a landowner who has had and lost two wives already. The marriage will save their family from financial ruin yet deprive her of the Irish lad she might have had, Morgan McDonagh.
Grace dutifully complies and marries Bram Donnelly, who turns out to be a cruel man with a temper who beats her. With political violence sweeping through Ireland and the potato blight destroying lives, she secretly sides with the Young Irelanders, among them her crippled brother, Sean, and Morgan who becomes a the rebel leader—the man who has loved her since they were both young.
This is a well-told tale based on much research so you are brought into the terrible times Ireland faced. The English stood by and did nothing, imprisoning (or killing) those who couldn’t pay their rent. One million people died and more than a million fled the country. Moore vividly portrays the famine that led to the growing movement in Ireland for independence. She gives the reader wonderfully courageous characters. At 461 pages it’s a long book but so worth reading.
And you’ll want to have books 2 and 3 as the story continues. It’s historical fiction but it’s also historical romance. It will tear at your heart to experience all that comes to Grace, both love and tragedy. And she brings the faith of the Irish people to center stage which I loved. It was very encouraging.
The Gracelin O’Malley Trilogy:
Gracelin O’Malley
Leaving Ireland
‘Til Morning Light
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