Many Long Years to Home

"Focusing on one woman's life journey in Ireland and New Haven, Connecticut over six decades, Mary Flad tells a compelling, intimate, and nuanced story of joy, pain, and survival. Many Long Years to Home powerfully illuminates the complexities of Irish society and immigration in a mid-sized New England City during the 19th century, while exploring matters of class, gender, and labor in challenging times. Evocatively written, this is a rich work of historical fiction that deserves a wide audience." -Joseph Nevins, author of Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid and co-author of A People's Guide to Greater Boston

"Writer Mary M. Flad imagines what life could have offered her great-great-grandmother, Margaret Hickey Fogarty, who was a country girl in Ireland in the decades before the Great Famine. An inquisitive and earnest youth, Margaret found employment with doctors who valued her as their assistant. Eventually, Margaret moved to Dublin where she was a full-time nurse and midwife in the city hospital. Family responsibilities encouraged her journey to the United States where she found her nursing skills, once again, in demand. Flad's family-inspired story illuminates the resourcefulness and bravery immigrant women must have had to make the journey to America, keep their families together, and survive." -Sally Dwyer-McNulty, Professor of History/FAC Chair, Marist College