This writing is an historical fiction account of the life and times of the author’s great grandmother, Catroina O’Croinin. From the time that she was born as a spindly little child in the far southwest of County Cork, with the humbling cold and perpetually wet climate of Ireland and through all the agony of the rape and pillage of the Irish people by England. For nearly a thousand years the raiders had posed a major threat to the farmers and artisans that were the Irish but none like the English who stole and murdered their way through the country for most of those thousand years. All of Catroina’s family had fallen under the English boot by the time she was in her middle teens. She escaped and found a man to love and protect her and eventually help her flee Ireland at the height of the an Gorta Mór – the Potato Famine.
Escaping on one of the Death Ships to Boston she and her husband were emotionally distraught to find that conditions in Boston were not markedly different than in Ireland. No Irish Need Apply – the sign that greeted them at every turn disabled their hope of making a living so they scraped their way to the Midwest to farm. . . .