Brideen

Written by Kathleen E. McDonnell

Narrated by Sandra Churchill & Rory O'Shea

Length

8h 4m

County Mayo, Ireland, 1847. The potato crop has failed two years in a row. People are in the throes of starvation, and young Bridget Sweeney must witness things that no nine-year-old should have to bear: Whole families stricken with fever, corpses littering the roadsides. When her own family is forcibly evicted in the dead of night, Brideen retrieves her tin whistle from the rubble, and the music of her homeland becomes a healing force that sustains her through the trials to come. On this Audio narrative of her remarkable journeys, the listener hears quotes from historical records, from centuries-old newspaper articles and especially, music! Faithful renderings of ballads and dance tunes from the Irish tradition. Through a mix of dogged determination, sheer luck, even divine grace, Brideen and her family make their way to England and ultimately to North America. An epic saga of the Irish diaspora, the author’s ancestor survives the Great Famine only to find herself swept up in the great upheavals of the 19th century: The industrial revolution in England, the Civil War in the U.S., and the European settlement of the American Midwest.