Ashley E. Sweeney is the author of the new novel The Irish Girl. Her other novels include Eliza Waite. She lives in the Pacific Northwest and in Tucson.
Q: How much was The Irish Girl inspired by your family history?
A: When I first heard my great-grandmother’s story of coming alone to America at age 13 in the late 19th century, I was 11, not much younger than my great-grandmother when she left Ireland for a new life in America.
My grandmother, Grace, Mary Agnes’s eldest daughter—a force to be reckoned with, and an outsize influence on my life—was my window into what her mother was like: a beauty, feisty, frugal, and fair, and in possession of a great sense of humor and influence, much like my grandmother.
My grandmother is long gone now, but over the years, I’ve often thought about her mother, Mary Agnes. One question would lead to another:
What prompted her to leave Ireland?
What was her journey like, a slight and naïve girl, alone?
What/who greeted her in America?
How did she survive?
While the novel is the bones of my great-grandmother’s journey, it is highly fictionalized. It also represents a montage of many of our foremothers’ stories of coming to America for a new life more than a century ago.
But it wasn’t until I stood on the ground where Mary Agnes grew up in rural western Ireland several years ago that I knew I had to tell her story. It was palpable, standing there at the end of Dawros Beg, a small peninsula jutting into the North Atlantic. The story was literally swirling around me.
Q: How did you research the novel, and what did you learn that particularly surprised you?
A: As with any novel I write, I immerse myself in the time period I’m writing about.
This includes reading period books, newspapers, journals, magazines, census reports, birth and death certificates, real estate transactions, transportation schedules, menus, and playbills, anything I can get my hands on consistent with the era. Especially advertisements! I can get lost for hours reading archival ads.
Known as “going down a rabbit hole,” research also extends to understanding politics, jargon, and hygienic and medical practices of the day (the fact that Mary Agnes’s first employer has indoor plumbing in 1886 is a wonder to her).
One particularly poignant fact I learned while researching Castle Garden, the immigration facility that predated Ellis Island (1882) in New York, is that often immigrants fell to their knees and kissed the ground once they had cleared customs.
As a visual learner/thinker/writer, I imagine immigrants from all over the globe—Russians, Italians, Scandinavians, Greeks, Irish—with long capes and shawls, tattered trousers and scuffed boots, dark hats and colorful headscarves, clustered in groups speaking their native tongues and, with a combination of laughter and tears, kneeling on damp New York City sidewalks and literally kissing the ground. I can see it cinematographically.
Q: The writer Michelle Cox said of the book, “At times both tragic and hopeful, this sweeping literary drama is ultimately a story of perseverance—one to which we can all relate somewhere in our immigrant past.” What do you think of that description?
A: Very accurate, as I would expect from prolific historical fiction author Michelle Cox!
Perseverance—and hope—are the central themes of the novel. Without divulging too much of the storyline, Mary Agnes again and again picks herself up from hardships and continues on with an indubitable Irish spirit, first in Ireland and then in New York, Chicago, and Colorado.
Q: Given the current focus on immigration, do you see the novel fitting into that debate?
A: Yes, there are parallels in Mary Agnes’s story to the plight of immigrants arriving in the U.S. today. Often vilified, derided, shunned, and abused, many immigrants face hostility and harassment upon arrival. It’s tragic, as all of us—save Native Americans—have come to this country from somewhere else in the past 400 years.
During Covid, my husband and I volunteered on Friday nights at an immigrant processing center in Tucson. We made it a priority to greet all new arrivals with dignity and compassion.
When you hear harrowing stories of whole families—grandparents, parents, children—walking more than 1,000 miles for the chance at a better life, it’s hard not to welcome them here.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: My work in progress is still under wraps, but it’s set in the 1930s in Tucson and features three protagonists. Other ideas in the hopper include a dual narrative set in Astoria, Oregon, two centuries apart and a tragedy set on a Nebraska farm, also in the 1930s.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: While The Irish Girl is not a YA novel, mature teens will resonate with the story as the protagonist is aged 13 to 19 from the beginning to the end of the novel.
My other novels feature a 19-year-old (Ada Weeks in Answer Creek), a 29-year-old (Eliza Waite in Eliza Waite), and a 36-year-old (Ruby Fortune in Hardland).
To get into the head of a teenager, I reread my high school journals for the first time since I wrote them (!). There’s a lot of angst and uncertainty there.
What I would like to tell my teenage self is to believe in myself more than I already did at the time, like ten times more, or a hundred. That is what I instilled in Mary Agnes: an unshattering belief in herself. I hope that resounds with teens today: believe in yourself and don’t let anyone stop you from achieving your dreams.
Thank you so much for featuring The Irish Girl on your blog! For more information, visit my website at: https://ashleysweeneyauthor.com/
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Ashley E. Sweeney.
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