January 08, 2015

Would you go?

Ruth 1:16b "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. 

Your people will be my people and your God my God." 


Our alchemy

I told you already, I will go.
Wherever you go I will be there too.
I will hold your hand until we melt together.
Like new.

Let us drink this elixir and
Travel light, with Summer along too,
And in this heat our slippery thoughts are fully exposed.

We sail,
The wind our companion
Bone and bone,
Flesh and flesh,
Dragging behind mistakes forgiven
And my unnamed future without you.

Inspired by my book Gala, which was inspired by the Book of Ruth, available on Amazon in paperback, for those who, like me, like to curl up with a good book; or on Kindle, for those modern women who read the modern way!

January 06, 2015

An Immigrant's Tale



"It’s generally understood that many fiction writers have a semi-autobiographical protagonist in their first books." Joanna Penn

This is certainly true of my first novel. While the story is based on Ruth in the Bible, I could identify with her traveling from one culture to another and working to fit in and be accepted. When I met Mark in 1992, he was only the 3rd American I had ever really met (the first one was also called Marc, at an Irish Language Summer Camp in Blackrock College when I was 12, and like my Mark he was pretty with brown skin, so clean and rich looking). I had never been off the British Isles, not even to the continent (of Europe), let alone the Americas! I am a homebody, I do not like to travel and had no intentions of seeing the world and was not practiced in the art of meeting people different from myself.

So when this American asked me to marry him, with the implicit idea that we would live in the US, I only agreed in my heart when he said that if I didn't like it we could go live in Ireland. Adjusting to American life was very difficult for me. I was very much a South Dublin Protestant when I moved to the States. But I knew for many reasons that my life in Ireland had ended and I was 'meant' to be in America. So I sucked it up. I adjusted. I changed my accent, my clothing. I learned to appreciate American customs and freedoms and ways.

And eventually, like Ruth, like Gala, I was accepted. I found my place. And I was loved.

And now, 20 years later life is good here.

The journey was worth the effort.

Buy my paperback novel Gala on Amazon.
Or get the Kindle version.

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