Read more
Zusatztext Reviewed in Bookselling Kids' Pick of the Lists Part Two for October 2000. Informationen zum Autor Patricia Reilly Giff has written more than 50 books for young readers, including the Kids of the Polk Street School series. Klappentext 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.CHAPTER 1 Someone was calling. "Nor-ry. Nor-ry Ryan." I was halfway along the cliff road. With the mist coming up from the sea, everything on the path below had disappeared. "Wait, Nory." I stopped. "Sean Red Mallon?" I called back, hearing his footsteps now. "I have something for us," he said as he reached me. He pulled a crumpled bit of seaweed out of his pocket to dangle in front of my nose. "Dulse." I took a breath. The smell of the sea was in it salty and sweet. I was so hungry I could almost feel the taste of it on my tongue. "Shall we eat it here?" he asked, grinning, his red hair a mop on his forehead. "It'll be over and gone in no time," I said, and pointed up. "We'll go to Patrick's Well." We reached the top of the cliffs with the rain on our heads. " I am Queen Maeve ," I sang, twirling away from the edge. " Queen of old Ireland ." I loved the sound of my voice in the fog, but then I loved anything that had to do with music: the Ballilee church bells tolling, the rain pattering on the stones, even the carra-crack of the gannets calling as they flew overhead. I scrambled up to Mary's Rock. As the wind tore the mist into shreds, I could see the sea, gray as a selkie's coat, stretching itself from Ireland to Brooklyn, New York, America. Sean came up in back of me. "We will be there one day in Brooklyn." I nodded, but I couldn't imagine it. Free in Brooklyn. Sean's sister, Mary Mallon, was there right now. Someone had written a letter for her, and Father Harte had read it to us. Horses clopped down the road, she said, bringing milk in huge cans. And no one was ever hungry. Even the sound of it was wonderful. Brook-lyn. The rain ran along the ends of my hair and into my neck. I shook my head to make the drops fly and thought of my da on a ship, the rain running down his long dark hair too. Da, who was far away, fishing to pay the rent. He had been gone for weeks, and it would be months before he came home again. I swallowed, wishing for Da so hard I had to turn my head to hide my face from Sean. I blew a secret kiss across the waves; then we picked our way up the steep little path to Patrick's Well. We sat ourselves down on one of the flat stones around the well and leaned over to look into the water. People with money threw in coins to sink to the bottom. Granda said that might be why it took so long for those prayers to be answered. But not many people had coins to drop into the well. Instead there was the tree overhead. People tied their prayers to the branches: a piece of tattered skirt, the edge of a collar. "I see my mother's apron string." Sean pointed up as he tore a bit of dulse in two and handed me half. I nodded, sucking on a curly edge....
