It’s 1845 in Ireland, and Nory Ryan’s family is struggling. Dad has gone to earn the money to pay the rent on their home. The potato crop has gone bad. Nory is only a child, but she is facing the reality that everyone may die simply from lack of food. When it looks as though there is no hope and no one is coming to save them, Nory summons all of her courage and faces the shadow of the past.
176 pages 978-0440418290 Ages 9-13
Keywords: starvation, European history, 1900s, family, courage, 9 year old, 10 year old, 11 year old, 12 year old, 13 year old
Recommended by: Barb Langridge, abookandahug.com
**********
Nory Ryan's family has lived on Maidin Bay on the west coast of Ireland for generations, raising a pig and a few chickens, planting potatoes, getting by. Every year Nory's father goes away on a fishing boat and returns with the rent money for the English lord who owns their cottage and fields, the English lord bent upon forcing the Irish from their land so he can tumble the cottages and clear the fields for grazing. Times are never easy on Maidin Bay, but this year, a terrible blight attacks the potatoes. No crop means starvation. Twelve-year-old Nory must summon the courage and ingenuity to find food, to find hope, to find a way to help her family survive.---from the publisher
