Publisher's Synopsis
Materially speaking, we were poor according to the world's standards but abundantly rich in all of Nature's beauty and bounty. This Little Book tells the story of an Irish family growing up and away in the trying times of the 1950's and 1960's. The Benedictine Abbey and the Back Lodge, like a miniture stone castle, become the romantic setting for one extraordinary family struggling to raise twelve children. Jean, one of twins and the second youngest, recalls here with vivid detail the rural life and struggles of that family, the O'Donovan's. Jean takes us along on her most challenging personal journey when she contracts polio in the summer of 1959. She recounts with stark recall the long months spent alone in hospitals during those formative years. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger she believes. To Jean even polio was a blessing in disguise. To her it was an opportunity to see others and even her father with more understanding and loving eyes. The emigrant longs to go back home again, Jean says and here she takes us down her Memory Lane. Down the Avenue of Time, where one can laugh and play and be a child again - if only for a little while. Glenstal, to Jean, was and remains to this day a magical place. The story of Saving the Turf in Moher Bog, her Mother's Unforgettable Journey, accounts of going to School in Murroe, Rawking Apples at Gow's, Mickey's Bull, Pictures in Cappamore, as well as the numerous galavantings of herself, her siblings, and the neighbor children around the Abbey grounds and beyond, all take us back to a more innocent and nostalgic era - one that is long gone but lives on forever in the memory of an Irish exile from Glenstal.
