A Better Life: Family Stories

Anne Marie Fitzgerald, great great grandmother to the author, is a house servant at Birkdale Manor in the years following the Irish potato famine. Many of the surrounding villages are deserted or in ruins as those who have not died of starvation or disease have been driven to seek a better life in distant lands. Anne finds herself pregnant and unmarried, so her baby girl is forcibly taken from her shortly after her birth. Then the Birkdales compel Anne to leave Ireland and she is expected never to see her daughter again. See more