A story of a young couple who abandoned their careers in New York and moved to Ireland tells of their idyllic life in a cottage, surrounded by the beauty and character of the land of their ancestors

O Come Ye Back to Ireland: Our First Year in County Clare

Travel

WILLIAMS, Niall

Breen, Christine

Europe

Soho Pr Inc

Niall and Christine left their careers in New York City for a simpler, more authentic life in a cottage outside the tiny village of Kilmihil in County Clare. "Their tale is a delightful romance."—The New York Times Book Review

Soho Press

Details the experiences of two novice farmers on a farm in western Ireland, relating their experiences at animal husbandry, their attempts to have a child, and their assimilation into Irish life

When Summer's in the Meadow: Our Life in Clare

Literature & Fiction

The authors, who moved from Manhattan to western Ireland five years ago, describe their experiences traveling through other areas of Ireland

The Pipes Are Calling: Our Jaunts Through Ireland

When Summer's in the Meadow

The Pipes Are Calling : Our Jaunts Through Ireland

When Iris Bowen makes a promise to her dying husband, it’s a promise she never expected to keep. But when she’s forced to confront her own mortality she understands it's time to honour that promise and go in search for the woman who gave birth to her daughter.\nHer Name Is Rose is a powerful and moving story of people connected not by the circumstance of their birth but by the ties that bind us all.\nIn Ireland, Iris is a free-spirited, impulsive and indomitable mother who gardens to exhaustion when she’s not writing for the local newspaper. When she makes the decision to find her daughter’s birth mother she pitches herself against the unknowable, armed with nothing more than a 20-year-old envelope.\nIn London, Rose is a first year violin student who, against the challenges of London life and a burgeoning career as a virtuoso, confronts a critical and brilliant mentor with disasterous consequences, which results in her abandoning her violin, on the Tube.\nAnd in New York City, Rowan, a landscape architect and a bachelor with a progressive alcohol problem, discovers a secret kept from him for 20 years when he meets a woman at his grandfather’s funeral.\nThe novel is a quest-story with a twist, the story of an adoptive mother’s journey to find the woman who gave birth to her daughter, and who ends up getting a second chance at love.

Her Name is Rose

Literary

Kiltumper Books

Biographies & Memoirs

Memoirs

Independently published

People used to say Iris Bowen was beautiful, what with the wild weave of her red hair, the high cheekbones, and the way she carried herself like a barefoot dancer through the streets of Ranelagh on the outskirts of Dublin city. But that was a lifetime ago.
In a cottage in the west of Ireland, Iris--gardener and mother to an adopted daughter, Rose--is doing her best to carry on after the death of her husband two years before. At the back of her mind is a promise she never intended to keep, until the day she gets a phone call from her doctor.
Meanwhile, nineteen-year-old Rose is a brilliant violinist at the Royal Academy in London, still grieving for her father but relishing her music and life in the city. Excited but nervous, she hums on the way to an important master class, and then suddenly finds herself missing both of her parents when the class ends in disaster.
After the doctor's call, Iris is haunted by the promise she made to her husband--to find Rose's birth mother, so that their daughter might still have family if anything happened to Iris. Armed only with a twenty-year-old envelope, Iris impulsively begins a journey into the past that takes her to Boston and back, with unexpected results for herself and for Rose and for both friends and strangers. 
Intimate, moving, and witty, Christine Breen's Her Name is Rose is a gorgeous novel about what can happen when life does not play out the way you expect.

Her Name Is Rose: A Novel

United States

St.Martin's Press

Iris Bowen is a young Irish gardener and mother of a beloved adopted daughter, Rose. A recent widow, Iris has spent the last two years concentrating on the day-to-day business of launching Rose into the world. But when she receives some worrisome results on a breast scan, the words of her husband as he was dying of cancer become hauntingly urgent. He had begged Iris to search for Rose's birth mother so that Rose would still have family if anything happened to Iris. Suddenly, Iris fears that Rose really could be left alone.
With no records to guide her beyond a twenty-year-old envelope, Iris impulsively begins a journey into the past that takes her to Boston and back to the west of Ireland, with surprising results for herself, for Rose, and for the others whom their lives touch.
At turns moving and funny, Her Name Is Rose by Christine Breen is a gorgeous and intimate debut novel about what happens when life does not play out the way you expect.

HER NAME IS ROSE

Griffin

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Breen, Christine. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Breen, Christine

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Breen, Christine. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

O Come Ye Back to Ireland: Our First Year in County Clare

O Come Ye Back to Ireland: Our First Year in County Clare

When Summer's in the Meadow: Our Life in Clare

The Pipes Are Calling: Our Jaunts Through Ireland

When Summer's in the Meadow

The Pipes Are Calling : Our Jaunts Through Ireland

Her Name is Rose

O Come Ye Back to Ireland: Our First Year in County Clare

Her Name Is Rose: A Novel

HER NAME IS ROSE