Dimensions
145 x 223 x 29mm
A Journey From The Edge Of Ireland
On Christmas Eve 1946 a young man collapsed on a remote island off the West Coast of Ireland. There was no priest, no doctor and no policeman on the Great Blasket, and no contact with the outside world. Helpless, his family watched him die. The death of the young man was the final catalyst for the end of the island community, whose people spoke a pure form of Irish and gathered by the turf fires to hear tales handed down from an ancient way of life and plead for evacuation, which finally took place in 1953. Some, like the dead man's sister, went on to live on the Irish mainland. Others headed west to America. Cole Moreton's Hungry for Home tells the story of an Irish island and the dramatic events that led to its being abandoned. He goes in search of the missing islanders. Following the footsteps of the emigrants who had left half a century earlier, Moreton seeks out the dead man's brothers and discovers an extraordinary end to their untold story. This is a book about home and what that means, and most of all it is the story of the Kearneys.
