Book cover of Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women

Book description

The Number 1 Bestseller

'A captivating account of lives previously ignored' Sunday Independent

'An important, impeccably researched though eminently readable book that charts new territory' Irish Examiner

* * *

Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was not a good place to be a woman. Among the wave…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Bad Bridget as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I like this book because it remembers forgotten women. I recall visiting in the early 1970s an old and distant relative of mine in Boston who had worked in domestic service most of her life and who early on encountered signs stating “No Irish, No Negroes Need Apply”.

I think that for too long, the fate of domestic servants and other impoverished young women immigrants who became Irish Americans has been neglected. This racy account of how the American dream ended badly for too many Irish women forced to leave their homes for the USA goes some way for me…

From Colum's list on learn about Irish America.

If you love Bad Bridget...

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These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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