DEAR AMERICA: Irish Mill Girl

Gahhhhhh, this book. So Far From Home was the sixth Dear America book, one of four published in 1997. Barry Denenberg contributed several books to Dear America and its spinoff series.

Like a lot of the earlier books, So Far From Home is short, the type is large and it's a very quick read.

It's very, very frustrating.

Denenberg creates a very likeable character in Mary and she has a strong cast surrounding her. Her horrible, self-centered older sister Kate who works as a lady's maid and does squat to help send for their parents. Her schoolteacher aunt who paid for both sisters' passage, Mary's years after Kate's. Sean, who she met on the ship, and with the help of his uncle, they saved a poor blind girl, whose parents helped Mary on the ship but didn't survive the passage. Annie, an older Yankee mill girl, who writes poetry and is refreshingly independent. Spunky Laura, a more rebellious mill girl. Stuck up Clarissa, another mill girl who meets a rather terrible end due to her own vanity. Every character Denenberg adds to the story comes to life quickly and often disappears. This book could easily have been twice its length. That's the frustrating part. It's over so quickly, you're left wanting more.

But then there's the bad stuff. Mary's constantly ill from mill work. A letter comes and she learns her parents have died in Ireland before enough money could be saved to pay for their passage. Her friend Sean has been arrested for something he didn't do. So Mary and Laura take all the savings Mary and her aunt had put together and they go bail out Sean and save blind Alice, getting her to a school for the blind.

The worst thing though is the epilogue. Sean gets bailed out and disappears. Kate keeps working as a maid and gets married. Her happy ending irritates me. Aunt Nora, Annie and Alice all have happy endings, too, and that's good. But then...then the final two lines.

Mary died in the cholera epidemic of 1849. She was seventeen.

I don't think I'll ever forgive Denenberg for the sucker punch of that horrible epilogue. Mary worked so hard and went through so much only to die incredibly young. Realistic? Yes, of course. But also a bit sadistic, Mr. Denenberg.

I did not see a lot of the Dear America live action shorts, but apparently, Mary got one, judging from this VHS box here. And she also was apparently played by a thirty-year-old. That woman does not look fifteen. Come on, casting. Sigh.

Anyway, up next is one of the other very early DAs, about...the Oregon Trail. Again. Then we've got a two-book break and it's once more on the trail, only this time for the younger readers with a My America trilogy.