Mary Pat Kelly’s GALWAY BAY is a 551-page story of the Keeley and Kelly families beginning in Ireland in 1839 all the way to their lives in Chicago and their get-together at the Chicago World Fair in 1893. While the book is fiction, it is based on the lives of Mary Pat Kelly’s own ancestors and stories told to her by her cousin, Sister Mary Erigina, who lived to be 107. She grew up on these stories told to her by this book’s narrator, Honora Keeley Kelly, who really was Mary Pat Kelly’s great-great grandmother.

But GALWAY BAY isn’t just stories of Mary Pat Kelly’s ancestors. You want to read this for its accurate historical details that Kelly researched for 35 years in both Ireland and the U.S. It covers so much that I thought I knew but didn’t. And the advantage to its being historical fiction rather than a history book is that the reader can feel how people lived through these times.

For example, I learned details about living through the Irish Potato Famine that I never knew before. I was ignorant to think the Potato Famine is capitalized because of a terrible blight that killed the Irish potato crops. That, alone, wouldn’t have been enough to send them packing for Canada and the U.S. or to merit capitalization. It was the blight three years in a row combined with English laws that seemed designed to wipe out the Irish and, indeed, did lead to so many deaths they were almost annihilated.

GALWAY BAY is full of many other examples of historical events and people. It might make you want to learn more, especially if you, too, have ancestors who lived through this. That’s what I plan.

I REALLY LIKE THIS BOOK; IT WAS VERY INFORMATIVE ABOUT IRISH HISTORY
(Some members of my book club thought it was too long)

What can I say about this book??!! A long book of over 500 pages but so worth reading about the great Irish famine in the mid 1800's. A story of a family who survived and miraculously made it to America. You will be engaged with the characters and the overall history of the Irish Catholics.