FernFolio

During Ireland’s Great Famine, in the 1840’s, the potato crops were struck with blight and turned to rotten mush in the fields.   For poor tenant farmers, who for generations had planted potatoes as their only crop, the blight spelled disaster.  Without food to fed their families, or a crop to sell for money to buy goods and pay their rent, Irish men left to look for jobs in England, but soon there was no jobs to be had, and people starved.
With her da off in England looking for work, Kit Byrne, fourteen, works long hours as a maid in the house of Lord Fraser, the English landowner, and helps her mother with little Annie, while her brother, Jack, helps old Lizzie, the village wise woman and healer, for an egg a day.  Though times are difficult, her mam’s devote belief that God will provide and her abiding hope in the future, help Kit and her brother and sister in the face of growing adversity.  Kit delights in her friendship with Millie, and enjoys stolen moments with Tom Lynch, son of the Frasers’ middleman.
But this winter, things turn harder, faster, than the winter before.  Kit is fired along with many of the other household servants by Lynch as a cost cutting measure.  Though she finds work helping Lizzie alongside Jack, she watches in growing alarm as no letter arrives from her father, and her mam and siblings get thinner.
In the year that follows, Kit watches as, unable to pay their rent, friends and neighbours are evicted from their houses by Lynch, others say good-bye before boarding ships to Canada, Australia and America, and other, too many others, die of starvation, overwork, fever, or grief.
Forced by bitter circumstance to become the head of her own family, Kit discovers in herself the determination to do anything it takes to ensure her loved ones’ safety and survival, even if it means imprisonment or death.
Written by Caroline Pignat, author of the wonderful Egghead, Greener Grass is a gripping account of one girl’s struggle to survive the Irish Potato Famines.  Pignat’s story is rich in historic detail, yet simply and movingly told.  Terrific!
FernFolio Editor