Showing results by author "Olive Collins" in All Categories

1821: Among the thousands of Irish deportees to the Caribbean British Colonies is a 10-year-old Irish boy, Art O’Neill. As an indentured servant on a sugar plantation in Jamaica, Art gradually acclimatizes to the exotic country and the unfamiliar customs of the African slaves.

1916: Betty O’Fogarty is proud and clever. Spurred on by Betty's belief in her husband Seamus’s talent as a violin-maker and her desire to escape rural life, the couple elopes to Dublin. As Dublin is plunged into chaos as the Easter Rebellion of 1916, Betty gives birth to her first child to the sound of gunfire and shelling. A hundred years later, secrets churn their way to the surface, and Betty’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren uncover both Betty’s ruthlessness and her unique brand of heroism. 

The year 1865. Goldie O’Neill was nine years of age when she trekked across the unclaimed American West with her family to form their own Irish Catholic colony. Their new community had dreams of self-governance and prosperity far removed from the anti-Irish sentiment and prejudice of the ruling classes. They soon learned about the extremes of the American West and the ongoing Indian war. A year after their arrival, Goldie blames herself for her sister’s disappearance.

Marguerite Kelley’s childhood home was dominated by the disappearance of her uncle who vanished into thin air. On a windy morning in November 1905, she is the first to hear about the discovery of a skeleton tucked under the eaves of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Manhattan. Suspecting the remains are that of her uncle who worked on the construction of the Cathedral, she wants to be the first person to break the news to Roisin, his widow, and to her father Patrick Kilbane. She hopes the discovery will solve a mystery that has dominated her family for a quarter of a century.