Red-Robin

In a meadow on the Irish coast, a girl named Moira O'Donnell lies watching a red robin and dreams of everything she has never seen. This is the image that opens Jane Abbott's tender early twentieth-century novel of aspiration and displacement. Moira is seventeen, burning with hunger for knowledge and adventure that her humble village cannot provide. When her family decides to seek their fortune in America, she carries with her both hope and grief, leaving behind the only world she has known but believing that somewhere beyond the horizon, a brighter life awaits. In the New World, reality proves harder than the dream. Her father suffers a devastating accident, and the family must grapple with poverty, displacement, and the crushing weight of dreams deferred. Yet Moira's spirit remains unbroken. This is a story for anyone who has ever left home chasing a vision of something better, only to discover that belonging is the hardest prize of all.