📖 Publication Day Book Review ~ The Letter Home by Rachael English

 

Headline Review 

e-Book 3 February 2022

My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book

A faded letter. A mother lost. A daughter found..

When journalist Jessie Daly loses everything she holds dear, she travels home to Ireland's west coast, and helps an old friend researching life during the famine. Jessie becomes drawn into the heartbreaking story of a brave young mother, Bridget Moloney, and her daughter, Norah.

On the other side of the ocean, in Boston, Kaitlin Wilson is researching her family tree. She unearths a fascinating story, but her research forces her to confront uncomfortable truths about the past, as she uncovers an unexpected connection to Ireland in famine times.

Generations before, in the small town of Boherbreen, a young mother faced a heart-wrenching choice: to watch her baby girl perish with hunger, or to start out for a new life in America, alone, in order to protect the one she loves most...

📖 My Review.. 

There are a few authors on my list who I know will never let me down and Rachael English is one such storyteller. From the start of The Letter Home I was engrossed in the way that the past, and the present, are brought to life in a family drama which spans generations and which tugs away at the heartstrings.

Initially set in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, at the height of the potato famine, we meet Bridget Maloney and her young daughter Nora who are facing the worst hardships imaginable. We then move forward to the present day and meet, Jessie and Kaitlin, two very modern young women who are separated by an ocean but who discover in searching for clues about their family history that there are secrets which have been hidden away for generations. 

Beautifully written, and impeccably researched, I enjoyed all the many different aspects of The Letter Home. The history, and hardship, of nineteenth century Ireland comes alive but then so does the present day with all its modern challenges and I found that I enjoyed reading Jessie and Kaitlin's story as much as Bridget's decision to say goodbye to everything she loved. By carefully threading together the missing pieces of this family history we encounter every emotion from sadness and despair, through to acceptance and remembrance.

The heartbreaking connection to the past is what binds future generations together and The Letter Home is a poignant story about surviving incredible hardship and of making a brave new start against all odds.

About the Author

Rachael English is a bestselling novelist and presenter on Ireland’s most popular radio show, Morning Ireland. During more than twenty years as a journalist, she has worked on most of RTE Radio’s leading current affairs programmes, covering a huge range of national and international stories. The American Girl, The Night of the Party and The Paper Bracelet were all top 5 Irish bestsellers.

@EnglishRachael #TheLetterHome

@headlinepg

@HeadlineFiction

Blog Tour ~ The Paper Bracelet by Rachael English ☼

☼ Excited to be hosting a stop on this Blog Tour ☼

Headline
9 July 2020

My thanks to the publishers and Random Things Tours for my copy of this book
and the invitation to be part of the blog tour

Inspired by heartrending real events, the gripping new novel from the No. 1 bestselling author about a former nurse in an Irish mother and baby home who reunites the mothers with the babies they were forced to give up years ago.

Every baby's bracelet held a mother's secret...For almost fifty years, Katie has kept a box of secrets.

It dates from her time working as a nurse in a west of Ireland mother and baby home, and contains a notebook with details of the babies and young women she met there. It also holds many of the babies' identity bracelets.

Following the death of her husband, Katie makes a decision she has long kept at bay. She posts a message on an internet forum, knowing that the information she possesses could help reunite adopted people with their birth mothers.

Soon, the replies are rolling in, and Katie encounters success, failure, heartache and joy as she finds herself in the role of part-detective, part-counsellor - chasing down leads, piecing together stories, and returning many of the bracelets to their original owners.

But there is one bracelet in the box that holds the key to a story that may never be told ...

What did I think about it..

When she worked as a nurse at Carrigbrack, an unmarried mothers home in the west of Ireland, Katie Carroll was the keeper of many devastating secrets. When she decides to place a message on an Internet forum hoping to reunite lost children with their birth mothers, Katie is inundated with requests from those who were born at Carrigbrack, nearly fifty years ago, and who are desperate to find out the truth. There’s something really heartbreaking about the box of baby identity bracelets that Katie Carroll has kept hidden as each tiny bracelet holds a myriad of poignant memories which have been kept secret for far too long.

This is such is a beautiful story which is both heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measure and, I think, what makes this fictional account all the more poignant is that the author has based everything on true events. That such unmarried mothers homes existed is particularly shameful but I think it is the way that young pregnant women were treated with such utter disdain and lack of empathy by those who were meant to care for them which makes this such a difficult story to read.

Throughout the story we follow particular characters who respond to Katie's appeal and I won’t do the author a disservice by recounting the story as that would spoil things entirely as, believe me, this is one of those stories where you don’t want to see any spoilers. However, there are some really lovely characters each with a poignant story to tell, and pretty soon I found that I was rooting for them and really wanted everything to work out.

The Paper Bracelet evolves quite beautifully and more than once I found that I was reading with tears in my eyes as it all just seems so unutterably sad, and yet, the story is so beautifully written so that I couldn’t put it down, even for a minute. I read it in one sitting and all credit to the author for highlighting this shameful problem and for making this sad story into such compelling reading. 

Days after finishing the book, The Paper Bracelet is still very much in my mind and whilst I know that this is fiction, I can’t help but wonder just how many other true stories there are out there of separated mothers and babies which remain locked away in secret files somewhere.

About the Author

Rachael English is a bestselling novelist and presenter on Ireland's most popular radio show, Morning Ireland. During more than twenty years as a journalist, she has worked on most of RTÉ Radio's leading current affairs programmes, covering a huge range of national and international stories.

Twitter @EnglishRachael #ThePaperBracelet

@headlinepg

@RandomTTours

My guest on the blog is ....Rachael English

I am delighted to introduce the author and broadcaster

Rachael English

Orion Books

Rachael welcome to Jaffareadstoo 

Where did you get the first flash of inspiration for Going Back? 

Three or four years ago, I went for a drink with some old college friends. After a couple of hours, the conversation turned to the summer we spent working in Boston. This was back in 1988 when Ireland could be a pretty grey place and when going to America felt as exotic as going to Mars. 

A few months previously, one of the group had had the opportunity to return to Boston. Superficially, he said, a lot had changed. The diner where we ate most of our meals was now a McDonald’s. The dive bar where we drank was long since closed. Despite this, he was taken aback by how familiar the city felt. Without the help of a map, he found our old apartment. Even the smell of the underground was instantly recognisable. 

The conversation made me think about how we remember people and places, and about what it would be like to return to a city where you had spent some of the most eventful months of your life. 

Tell us three interesting things about your novel which will pique the reader's interest? 

Hmmm, that’s a good one. Going Back is told in two parts - the story starts in 1988 and later jumps forward to the present day when we get to see what’s become of all the characters, especially the main pair, Elizabeth and Danny. I’ve always loved books with a ‘time jump ’like this, and, thankfully, it seems that lots of other people do too. 

I’ve also been surprised by the amount of 1980s nostalgia that’s out there - even among people who can’t have been very old at the time. The book contains plenty of references to the fashions, fads and politics of the late 1980s, so if you have a fondness for the era of big big hair, stonewashed denim and dubious rock music, you can relive it all. 

For the third thing, I’ll quote a colleague, a young journalist where I work (for my day-job, I present a morning radio news programme). He read Going Back on his holidays and afterwards told me that he would ‘never look at me in quite the same way again’. 

Did you base any of the characters on people you know? 

Not totally, but ... in the book, there’s a character called Donal who works in a five-star hotel in Boston. He invents ridiculous stories about Ireland which he tries to pass off as the truth. He believes that the more he ramps up the poverty and misery at home, the larger the tip he’ll receive from the hotel’s wealthy guests. I know someone who may have dabbled in this practice! 

Do you outline the plot first, or do you prefer to allow the story to go wherever it takes you? 

A bit of both. With Going Back, I started with quite a detailed plan. Half way through, however, I realised that the plot relied too heavily on coincidence, so I had to make some quite significant changes. I was also surprised by the extent to which characters began to veer off in different directions. Originally, Danny’s family were quite peripheral to the story, but the more I wrote, the more I realised that they had to play a central role. 

Something similar happened with my new book, Each and Every One. The main story concerns a wealthy Dublin family falling on hard times. As I wrote, however, I found I was concentrating more and more on a subplot involving a poorer family called the O’Neills. Eventually, I found a way to bring the two stories together, even though this hadn’t been my original intention. 

When do you find the time to write, and do you have a favourite place to do your writing? 

I’m fortunate, in that I don’t need a specific place or routine. If I only have half an hour, I’ll try to make the most of it. That being said, I did take some time off work this year so that I could write in a slightly more structured way. Like many before me, I’ve found that you never really let go. I might be out for a walk of making the dinner when an idea or a line will pop into my head and I’ll have to scribble it down - or text it to myself. 

What books do you like to read? 

Just about everything. In fact, I try to read as widely as possible. It really irritates me when people say they would never read a particular genre - I hate book-snobbery. I've just finished Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves which I loved. I also read quite a bit of crime fiction. I was in my publisher’s office in Dublin the other day and I managed to nab an advance copy of Michael Connelly’s new Harry Bosch book, The Burning Room. My all-time favourite writer is Anne Tyler. Her writing is so beautiful that reading it feels like singing, but there’s nothing pretentious or clever-clever about her books. 

Can you tell us if you have another novel planned? 

My new book Each and Every One has just been released, so at the moment, I'm busy with that. I'm in the early stages of writing a third book. It’s about a woman who reaches a turning point in her life and about her decisions affect the rest of her family.

Orion Books
18 September 2014

My thanks to Rachael for being such a lovely guest on my blog and for generously giving away a copy of her book Going Back to two lucky winners.

Rachael can be found on Facebook facebook.com/rachaelenglishwriter

and on Twitter @EnglishRachael

Going Back and Each and Everyone are available at all good book stores or Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

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Review ~ Going Back by Rachael English

It's never too late for a second chance

Orion
2014

The concept of going back is an interesting one and begs the question whether it’s ever a good idea to allow oneself the luxury of remembering times that are over and gone. For Elizabeth Kelly, her daughter, Janey’s, decision to spend a summer in the Brighton area of Boston in the United States, brings back memories of her own time of living and working in the city as a twenty-one year old in the 1980s. At home in Dublin, Elizabeth recalls this time with mixed emotion, as not only was it the first time she had lived away from home, but it was also the summer she fell in love. What then follows is the story of Elizabeth’s American love affair with the handsome and charismatic Danny Esposito, of the life experiences she shared with her group of friends and of the need they all had to escape from the realities of life for just one idyllic summer.

I was captivated by the story from the beginning and warmed immediately to Elizabeth’s character. I loved both her naivety and her insecurities and completely understood that for one perfect moment in time, away from her home and family, and the seriousness of her relationship with her Irish boyfriend, Liam, she was able to experience all that life had to offer without any of the responsibilities. By comparison, Danny is a complete charmer, his attractiveness and uncomplicated joie de vivre, is in direct contrast to Elizabeth’s more considered attitude to life.

The author writes with warmth and sensitivity and injects just the right amount of nostalgia and humour into the story. She paints a realistic picture of living life in the 1980s and then brings it bang up to date with Janey’s own personal story in Boston in 2011. The interweaving of past and present is done in a sympathetic way and there is a realistic drawing together of all the loose strands, until in the end the story comes together just the way you would want it to.

This is an impressive debut novel by an author who clearly loves writing stories. I can’t wait to see what’s coming next.

My thanks to the author for sharing her novel with me. Come back tomorrow to read an interview with Rachael English and for a chance to win a copy of Going Back.

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