Dimensions
154 x 233 x 36mm
Allie and Sarah. Through laughter and tears . . .
Nineteenth-century Dublin is a city riven by the greed of an emerging middle class and the unspeakable poverty of the poor. Alicia Buckley and Sarah Rooney, growing up there, embody that divide: Allie, whose coldly disapproving mother has social ambitions her daughter doesn't share, comes from a prosperous family, while Sarah is a child of the tenements.
But despite their different backgrounds, the girls enjoy an extraordinary friendship, so when Sarah falls pregnant, and is thrown out by her father, Allie doesn't think twice about joining her friend in exile. Neither woman is prepared for the deprivations she will face.
Pursing Sarah's soldier lover, they make their way, with baby James, to Kildare. There they become part of a community of outcast women, known as the Wrens of the Curragh, who live rough, savage lives on the outskirts of the army camp. Their number include prostitutes, ex-convicts and alcoholics; the life is crude and poverty stricken, often drunken and wild, the women reviled in the local town and forbidden the camp except on market days. But there is also sharing and trust and, through her work as the community's doctor, a liberation for Allie from the stifling expectations of her family.
The respite is short-lived. Tragedy and death force Allie and Sarah to turn their back on Ireland to make new lives in America. But a final twist of fate means that only one woman will reach that brave new world.
