In an effort to avoid the dreaded orphanage, the priest figures out a way to place the child in a loving home where the child (and the family) benefit from supplemented resources. Nuala’s story touches on income inequality between Irish Catholics and British Protestants, on the limited educational and employment opportunities available to the Irish poor, on the important, often behind-the-scenes role women played in the independence movement, and on the limited health care available to poor women unable to practice any reliable form of birth control (and the toll repeated pregnancies take on their bodies).Ī separate thread Riley creates is the story of an orphan foundling, literally left on a priest’s doorstep. Goliath story of poorly educated, unskilled, and impoverished farmers fighting to the death against all the power and might of the British Empire. The story of how the Irish war for independence played out in poor, rural West Cork is a fascinating David vs. Riley’s fabricated diary of Nuala Murphy was compelling in its entirety. The strongest parts of the book are the stories related to the guerilla fight for an independent Ireland (where Riley was born) that chiefly takes place in the 1920s.
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