Huntington Public Library Adult Reading Challenge

 Laura has a way of making the characters feel real to me. Her way of writing makes it where I couldn't put the book down even though I was choking back tears at many points. It is a gut wrenching story that leaves you pining for more -- to know what could have and should have been between Autumn and Finny as well as what the future holds for Sylvie, Jack, and the mothers.

Colum McCann blends the stories of the first men to travel across the Atlantic in a plane in 1919, with Frederick Douglass' historic tour of Ireland in 1845, and George Mitchell's work on the 1998 Good Friday Peace accords with the lives of four fictional generations of women. Lily is a maid in Ireland when she is inspired by Douglass' stirring speeches to immigrate to the United States. Through her trials and tribulations she marries, raises a family, and successfully takes over the family business. Her daughter, Emily, becomes a reporter, who, with her photographer daughter Lottie, covers the transatlantic crossing of Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown in 1919. Lottie slips Brown a letter to post when he arrives in the UK, but it remains in his pocket and becomes a thread weaving its way through the rest of the story. Years later, Lottie meets George Mitchell as he helps negotiate a peace from Ireland's "Troubles." Her daughter Hannah lost a son to the violence. T...