Featured on The TV Book Club on More4 on 1 August 2010.
Although the title suggests a new start in America the main character in this novel does move to the States for a new life but finds duty and family loyalty pull her back to Ireland to ‘do the right thing’. A lovely novel with rich characters, that will draw you right in to their lives so that you don’t want the story to end.
Rural Irish girl Ellie loves living in New York, working as a lady's maid for a wealthy socialite. She tries to persuade her husband, John, to join her but he is embroiled in his affairs in Ireland, and caught up in the civil war. Nevertheless Ellie is extremely happy and fully embraces her sophisticated new life. When her father dies she must return home, but she intends to sort her affairs quickly and then return to her beloved America. But once home her sense of duty kicks in and she decides, painfully, that she must stay to look after her mother and resume her marriage. Ellie is suddenly thrown into the simple, rural life she believed she had grown out of...
London reared of Irish parents Kate Kerrigan worked as a leading magazine editor in London before moving to Dublin, Ireland in 1990. She is currently a full-time writer and lives in the historic village of Killala in County Mayo on the West coast of Ireland with her husband and two sons.
