Why a Booktrail?
20th Century: Longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, this takes you from a down trodden area of New York in the search of the American dream. A historical meander through many of its various neighbourhoods across the ages.
We Are Not Ourselves
What you need to know before your trail
Eileen Leary wants more than the hand life has dealt her. She’s grown up in a poor area of New York city with hard -drinking Irish immigrant parents. So when she meets Ed Leary, a brilliant young scientist, she thinks she’s found the perfect partner to be with – one who will no doubt share her American Dream.
They have a son and all seems well for a while but a cloud of darkness hangs over their future and soon life is going to make Eileen rely on her inner strength and determination that she has always relied on.
Can the American dream, Eileen’s dream really be on the brink of collapse?
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
New York
This New York is a bleak one for Eileen grows up in a part of town with alcoholic parents and its not happy memories she fosters here. An old apartment in Woodside, Queens is where she has her earliest memories. Born in 1941 her life growing up is not one of happiness .
This is the story of one family told over 60 years – the post war years and therefore it’s also the story of post war America in many ways too seen through the eyes of one family. How they search for a better life and the range of new opportunities available for people at that time such as in the areas of health care and education
This is a wander around the history the Irish history of New York – from the Bronx college where the father works to the paint factory where he gets a job in early in Brooklyn and 82nd street which horrifies Eileen for the changes it reflects –
“The street had once been the jewel in the neighborhoods crown. The globes that used to adorn Eighty-Second Street’s lamps were gone. Similar ones could still be found on Pondfield Road in Bronxville, which may have been part of why she was so draw to the town:it was like a time capsule of Jackson Heights before the collapse.”
Being stuck in a time capsule is not what Eileen wants yet as tragedy strikes she sees the importance of hanging on to the good memories and the past. As we travel through the New York neighbourhoods with her – we see changes and the fingerprints of each era as they leave their mark on the present.
A very apt way of telling this story of Eileen and her family.
Where Next?
