An Irish Woman's Tale by Patti Lacy

This week, the
Christian Fiction Blog Alliance
is introducing
An Irishwomans' Tale
Kregel Publications (July 8, 2008)
by
Patti Lacy


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:




Patti Lacy graduated from Baylor University in 1977 with a B.S. in education. She taught at Heartland Community College in Normal, Illinois, until she retired in 2006 to pursue writing full time. She has two grown children with her husband, Alan, and lives in Illinois.



ABOUT THE BOOK

Far away from her Irish home, Mary Freeman begins to adapt to life in Midwest America, but family turmoil and her own haunting memories threaten to ruin her future.

A shattered cup. Cheap tea. Bitter voices asking what's to be done with the "little eejit." Mary, an impetuous Irishwoman, won't face the haunting memories--until her daughter's crisis propels her back to County Clare. There, in a rocky cliffside home, Mary learns from former neighbors why God tore her from Ireland forty-five years earlier. As she begins to glimpse His sovereign plan, Mary is finally able to bury a dysfunctional past and begin to heal. Irish folk songs and sayings add color to the narrative.

Watch the Book Trailer:



If you would like to read the first chapter of , go HERE

MY REVIEW:

An Irishwoman’s Tale is Patti Lacy’s debut novel. It is a rather dark tale and it deals with some of the more unseemly types of family dysfunction. The myriad of problems turns out to be so vast, that both the characters and ultimately the reader feel overwhelmed. In the beginning, it becomes readily apparent that the story is going to leap from the present back into the past. After a handful of chapters, sure enough, the main character – Mary – is telling her best friend Sally the story of her life up until that moment.

However, after 260 pages of excruciating detail of the past deeds leading up to that moment, you jump to the future and the daughters that were teens in the beginning of the story are now out of the house struggling with addictions of their own. That was a bit abrupt. The sudden change in time is followed by an abrupt trip to Ireland to make a whirlwind of discoveries. Things got very disjointed from there. Sally was flitting back and forth in her mind between Mary’s story and memories of her past, Mary was hearing voices and trying to make sense of all she’d learned – it was just too much.

To me, the author points the reader toward her main point on page 239 when Mary says, “Christ had changed me, had shown me what was right, but I kept trying to do it under my own power,” Mary said hurriedly, as if the words embarrassed her. “And that wasn’t enough.” I think a lot of the story points that direction. But those last 75 pages were such a departure from everything up to that point I was left at my wit’s end. It’s a good story, but it made me feel as confused as the characters in the book. You will have to make up your own mind on this one. It bamboozled me.