The Woman of the House - Hardcover

Alice Taylor's first memoir, To School Through the Fields, was an overnight sensation becoming the fastest-selling book in Ireland's history and spawning a series of further volumes that includes Quench the Lamp, The Village, Country Days, and An Irish Christmas, all available from St. Martin's Press. She continues to make her home in Innishannon, County Cork, where her family tends the local post office and market.

A nostalgic tale of Ireland in the 1950s, by the popular novelist whose previous labors in this vineyard (Country Days, 1995, etc.) have established her as a master of the genre. The current mania for all things Irish has been responsible, happily, for providing a ready, new audience for the honorable Celtic tradition of the family saga. Here we are introduced to the Phelans, who have worked their plot of land in County Cork for as long as anyone can rememberwhich in Ireland is a very long time indeed. Ned Phelan runs the farm, having inherited it from his drunken father Billy, and he has managed to make something of the place after working long years to overcome his fathers decades of neglect. Neds wife Martha is a trifle conceited, but their marriage is fairly happyand life goes well for them and their children, Nora and Peter, until Ned is killed in a riding accident. After that, Martha falls apart, sliding into depression, and Neds sister Kate Phelan steps in and tries to put Martha back on her feet. Kate, a trained nurse and teacher, dreams of opening a school for the children of the village, but the parish priest, fearful of secular education, stands in her way. She must also deal with her neighbors, the Conways, who have been feuding with the Phelans for generations and now want to take advantage of Neds death to seize the Phelan lands. In her struggle to save the farm and open her school, Kate simply wants to preserve the best of Irelands past while opening it to the future. Will she succeed? Sentimental and melodramatic to the max. If you get teary-eyed reading about turf fires and pony traps, this is the book for you. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.