I did not expect that ending! Why did Paddy had to die! Although some parts were difficult for me to understand, the book as a whole transported me back in time during the harshest winter in Ireland.
But still... It's so heartbreaking to read characters dying or no longer part of the story.
It would be nice to see a continuation story between Lorraine and Emmett. ( )

Lorraine lives with her Da, Ma, and little brother Paddy in the west of Ireland, County Galway. The story opens in autumn 1846, as the family gets ready to harvest the potato crop. The previous year, a blight wiped out the potato harvest across Ireland, but they are hoping this year will be different.

It isn't. Lorraine's family (tenant farmers) and the cottier families, as well as most tenant and cottier families across Ireland are facing starvation and disease, but the English landlords are unsympathetic. Lorraine hears their opinions from Miss Susanna, the English daughter of their landlord: the Irish exaggerate, they're lazy, etc. etc. etc. Lorraine tries to communicate to Susanna her family's real struggle, and she gets through, a little bit; Susanna shows her where she can collect eggs from the wall near the chicken coop.

But this isn't enough to save her family or the others, and the heads of the families are staring terrible options in the face: the workhouse (they don't always have space, and they've run out of blankets), the cities (Dublin is full of hungry, homeless people looking for work), or emigration to Canada, America, or Scotland. As the blight continues and the scale of the disaster begins to become apparent to the English, the landlords offer their tenants tickets on ships, so they won't die on their land.

The flap copy describes the Irish potato famine as "a little known part of history," which I don't think it is, but this may be the first time a younger reader has read about it in depth. And the author does not spare or sugarcoat reality: children die, people lose their faith, the people who could help often turn a blind eye instead. Lorraine is a character to root for, though, and even Susanna does her best to make a difference.

Back matter includes a postscript, a glossary (I always wish these would be in front), a bibliography, and a timeline of Ireland up through the famine, to 1851.

Quotes

Inside my head I cheered for them to succeed. They'd tilled the land. They'd harvested the crop. They had a right - a right to their own production, a right not to starve. Whoever that grain belonged to legally, morally it belonged to those men and boys. (206)

All this rage I felt, it didn't belong anywhere. No one controlled the murrain. The spuds failed...that's all there was to it...the spuds failed....No one was to blame. (225) ( )