Lace Curtain Irish

By P. L. O'Sullivan

Chicago, 1887: Sixteen-year-old Julia Hanlon sees plenty of opportunity in the land of her birth, an exile returning with no idea why her mother abandoned her as a child of three. Grabbing that opportunity comes with risks to a girl who fears deportation.

She knows what the future holds for her siblings if they don't assimilate, but disobeying their father could see Julia back in Ireland, alone. Her oldest brother must become her ally in a quest to leave the dust of Ireland behind, but Daniel betrayed her once before and his guilt is driving a wedge between them. Until he can find the words of a confession to atone for what he perceives as sins, Julia will find that her carefully considered plans for everyone's future are not under her complete control. Until he can confront their mother, there can be no peace in the Hanlon family.

A sweeping family saga, LACE CURTAIN IRISH follows the path of the first generation of native born children of immigrants who navigate between the Old World and the New. From the sparkling make-believe of the World's Columbian Exposition to the reality of the stinking Union Stockyards, the novel reveals Julia's sacrifices for the sake of her family, and her resilience in the face of declining personal fortune.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newcastlewest Books
• Release date: May 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9780983819530

P. L. O'Sullivan

P. L. O'Sullivan is a fourth generation Chicagoan with roots in the traditional Irish enclave of Bridgeport

Book preview

Indiana, 1887

The sand hills and tortured oaks of a wasteland flew by the window of the Pennsylvania Limited. Desolate prairie stretched unbroken to the east, a monotony that mingled with my reflection on the soot-speckled glass. Was it true, that a woman’s fate was in her face? I pressed closer to the window, peering through the gloom at a parched expanse of nothingness that never ended, no matter how fast the locomotive raced across Indiana.

But a few short weeks ago, on the train from Newcastlewest to Limerick City, I’d had my head filled with snippets of America. How those emigrant girls went on, quoting from letters, and asking me if what they read was true. What is it like, they asked, but my last views of my native land were seen by three-year-old eyes and I had no recollections. Neither did I have any idea why my mother left me behind in 1874. After thirteen years of pondering, I couldn’t say what I might have done, or not done, to earn such a punishment. On my return home, with giddy imaginings whistling past my ears, I prayed that I would never repeat some past mistake and find myself back on that same steamship, heading east.

Since boarding the train in New Jersey I had lost the companionship of an English widow who took me under her wing on the Atlantic crossing. Next to me sat a horrid woman who berated the Irish until I opened my mouth and a brogue tumbled out. A tense silence filled the space between us. Turning away from the window, with nothing to examine besides the backs of my hands, the wicked devil of loneliness took hold. Tears prickled behind my eyelids, while my tired brain worried over the possibility that I wasn’t even headed in the right direction.

Shadows grew behind farm buildings that popped up on the landscape like toadstools, a sign of dawn and a new day. Awake all night I was, with the relative comfort of the rail car putting me back in the Sisters of Mercy convent in Newcastlewest, in those rooms of plush upholstery and heavy velvets and Mother Superior’s frigid glare. Eyes squeezed tight against wet pools, I recalled the dank rooms of Grandmother’s house on Maiden Street, the rough chairs, the bare walls and patches of mold that were familiar. Why, Holy Mary, why did I feel such longing for all of that when I had run across the creamery bridge to get to the train station, and America, as fast as my short limbs could fly?

Two hours, Miss, the porter said, startling me from my window-gazing. If you’re going to breakfast, you’d better get soon.

Only two hours? I said.

A quick prayer, to thank St. Brendan for sending an Englishwoman, of all people, in answer to my incessant pleas. If her son hadn’t paid for my ferry ticket in Manhattan, I’d never have been able to afford the tea that filled my belly the night before, my liquid dinner. That was the end of the money, so, and there’d be no breakfast, but I wasn’t the least bit hungry. Only two hours, and what need of a dining car when I could feast at home. I was going home.

My chemise clung to my back while my drawers glued themselves to my bottom. Beads of sweat collected around my forehead, to be mopped away by a linen handkerchief that had grown too damp to do any drying. Uncomfortable, I shifted on the velveteen upholstery but my underclothes refused to let go of my skin. One set of clean linen remained in my bag, but I wouldn’t change until I was closer to Chicago or I’d arrive looking as wilted as a dying stalk. Wouldn’t Danny think poorly of me, I thought, if I presented myself without being properly turned out, as fresh as the shamrocks on St. Paddy’s Day.

The clatter of the train wheels were hypnotic, setting a beat to my methodical planning until my eyes closed. Dreams took root, sending me back to the cattle market in Newcastlewest, where the tinkers sold horses and hard men looked to settle old scores. A great herd of dairy cows walked in my reverie, surrounding the cart and blocking the road, the smell of manure getting stronger until my arm slid off my lap and I startled myself awake. The odor was real, and it was getting worse.

Packingtown, the old hag next to me grunted in complete disgust. She put a perfumed handkerchief to her nose, her free hand fluttering to indicate the panorama that was passing by.

Looking out of the window again, I was shocked to find that the view had changed drastically, as if I had woken up in a different country. Clusters and rows of shanties and tumbledown wooden houses lined dusty roads, while the aroma of cow manure blossomed into an ever more foul stench. Outside, it was getting darker rather than getting lighter, and my confidence was shaken by a great surge of fear. Sure and I might have slept through the stop in Chicago and was now hurtling along to the west, where savages and wild Indians roamed freely, with no money for the fare back to Chicago.

Nose to the glass, I tried to see forward, to where we were going, and back to see where we’d been, but it was only Packingtown, all around, the future and the past. My heart was beating so that I couldn’t catch my breath, while huge beads of sweat rolled down my back and trickled along the sides of my face. Holy St. Brendan, don’t abandon me now, I prayed. Hail Mary, full of grace, don’t let me be lost.

The train’s bell clanged like a bully, mean and overbearing, as the cars clattered over crossings. What had been groups of houses melted into a solid mass of tin, wood and hazy smoke, stinking and filthy, packed with stinking and filthy human beings. In doorway after doorway were women with empty eyes, watching the train streak past in a spray of sparks and soot. Children romped in the muck of back alleys, hard by the tracks, playing hide and seek between laundry that was flapping in the dirty air. Only a few feet from the fleeting train was an image of grinding poverty that resembled the worst of Limerick’s countryside, but concentrated and expanded into enormous proportions. The fetid aroma of animals and too many people in close quarters was mixed together with the reek of rotting offal and garbage, a scent that turned my stomach. Surely it was Divine Providence that spared me from eating that morning, for I’d have been sick right there and the money for food wasted.

Shacks gave way to factories that belched thick, black smoke, creating a cloud that seemed to block out the sun. The stench was left behind and what wonders then rose up before me. The train approached a vast and towering range of incredibly tall buildings, cliffs of brick and stone and cast iron that seemed to glow in the early morning sun. Chicago. Chicago, the porter called out as he walked the aisle. Chicago, next stop.

My destination, the end of my long journey. Chicago. A big city, I'd been told, but it was where I'd find a home and a new beginning, only steps away. My fingers couldn't move fast enough to grip the carpet bag that didn't want to leave the overhead luggage rack. Clumsy fool was I, to stumble over Her Ladyship in my haste to freshen up before a grand entrance after an absence of thirteen years. Would I recognize my Danny, I wondered, but of course I would know him anywhere, even though he'd never gotten around to sending me a carte de visite like I'd asked him, but men didn't like to sit still long enough to be photographed. Together again, after thirteen years, and we would talk all night and on into the next day, to reminisce and recollect as if we had never been apart. It would be grand, with Danny.

In the quiet of the ladies’ lounge, I sat down and pulled out the envelope that I had nearly worn out with peaking at every day since leaving Ireland. Open upon arrival in Chicago was neatly written across the front, above the bulge of coins that slid silently inside the sealed packet. After such a long wait, it was hard to believe that the time had actually come, and I paused for a minute before sliding my finger under the seal and tearing open the key to my immediate future.

With my eyes closed, I pictured the note and prayed that my dreams might be close to the actual words on the paper. We will all be awaiting you, yes, that's what the letter would say. We will all be awaiting you. No, better than that would be a note from Danny, all cheek and bold talk, reminding me that he'd said he'd come to get me and wasn't he doing just that. Preparing for a grand announcement, I smoothed my damp wool skirt carefully and unfolded the paper.

Wrong to lift my hopes, for they were tumbled down. Here was information on how to hire a hack in front of Union Station, directions on how to not be cheated. No one would be waiting in the lobby for the anxious traveler. As I was since the day that Grandmother Gorman was called home to God, I was alone. On my own. Inside the envelope was the money that was meant to pay for a cab, another train ticket, and some detailed instructions that I was to give to the driver. Seeking a clue to my ultimate destination, I scanned the page from top to bottom and back again. Not going home after all, but to the Academy of Our Lady. Not home. Blessed St. Patrick, there wasn't a home to go to and all the begrudgers in Newcastlewest, with all their warnings about the false promises of streets paved with gold, were proven correct.

Shaking with nerves, I smoothed the creases out of my best dress. I'd worn it when the photograph was taken in Limerick City, the last one that I mailed to the family at Christmas. So they'd recognize me, I'd donned the same dress before I left the boat in New York. My favorite, with a fine grey pinstripe and a fly-away collar, and didn't I look just like the young lady in the carte de visite. The features that looked back at me from the mirror while I adjusted my hat weren't the spit of that girl, no, not quite. The lace edging of the dress collar was limp, and that made my chin look more pudgy than usual. As for my hair, it was wringing wet and the fashionable frizz of curls that was all the rage in Limerick City framed my face in short, spiky wires. There's your fate, Julia, staring right back at you, I told myself. There she is, the girl who's altogether too dark and too fleshy to be a beauty.

The brakes screeched as the train lurched forward and tumbled back, sending me careening until I grabbed the edge of the basin and held on for dear life. Suddenly, all was still and the passengers stirred in the corridor, a rattle of packages and footsteps providing reassurance. A bit of a smoothing to the jacket bodice, a firm set of the shoulders, and I was off to take on a new life in a new city that had been burned to ash and come back even bigger. I picked up my bag, double-checked that the note and the cab fare were safely tucked up inside, and I put my foot on the platform, to alight in a town that was only about as old as me.

Before both feet were on the platform, I was awash in a rushing torrent of people, dozens and dozens of swiftly moving bodies that seemed to propel me from the train car to the baggage wagons. There was no time to walk at a normal pace, to look at all the different faces that floated and bobbed on the human current that carried me towards the lobby. In such bedlam I nearly forgot my trunk, and it took rude force to travel against the flow. From one riptide into the next I plunged, swept up by yet another wave of passengers who were also searching for their luggage.

Men from express companies tagged and toted myriad cases and crates, but the money changed hands so discretely and rapidly that I couldn't tell how much might be charged to port my case. Two bits, someone said, but which of the coins in my envelope was a two-bit piece? If only I could hear something familiar, pence or shillings or half-crowns, the things I understood well. A girl just off the boat was one who was in greatest danger of being cheated, and since I didn't know the value of the American money in my envelope, I had to play things safe. One mistake, and where would I be without the coins needed to get to the Academy of Our Lady. Thank God I was hale and hearty, a strong, strapping girl. I could haul my own trunk as easily as the express porters.

The battered old case was not particularly heavy, but it was cumbersome and awkward, forcing me to drag it along behind while the sea of people parted in front and regrouped in my wake. In a crowd of immense proportions, I was suffocating, overwhelmed by a constant racket of trains, steam engines, conductors shouting and human voices vibrating in my skull. Motion, continuous motion, as bad as the first days at sea, and my head began to spin like it had then. I stopped in my tracks, collapsing on the lid of the trunk.

In the cavernous waiting room, the clamor and clatter echoed back at me, a steady hum of voices pounding and pulsating until I wanted to scream out. I covered my ears and shut my eyes up tight against the never-ending barrage of images that battered at my brain like a million hammers. More than anything, I wanted to escape, to retreat back to the peace and quiet of Ireland. My head sank down, down towards the floor and away from the madness.

Would you be feeling unwell at all, miss? a gentleman tapped me on the shoulder.

Opening one eye, I had a view of a pair of light brown shoes that had been polished until they glistened, shoes that were planted firmly on the terrazzo floor. Above the shoes were trouser legs of lightweight grey wool, the fit rather tight compared to the mode of Limerick. The gleam of a gold watch fob startled me as the man bent over slightly to get my attention. His waistcoat was fitted with lovely pearl buttons, and his shirt was immaculately clean and crisply starched.

Even an Irishman could be a sporting gent, enticing an innocent girl to her doom. He jabbered about the weather, asked if I was just off the boat, and didn't such a suggestion sting my pride. I'd noticed that my best clothes were hardly up to the American standard of fashion, and being mistaken for an immigrant, not even a farm girl, nearly broke my heart. I'm for the cab stand, so, I said.

Already I was exhausted by the hissing of the electric arc lights overhead and the incessant clattering of shoe heels on the stone floor, noise without respite. The decor of the train station lobby was so elegant, so ornate and so huge that I was overwhelmed, engulfed in an echoing expanse that offered no relief from constant movement. Sweat ran down my back, tickling and itchy, while wool stockings provided Hell's own torments. Finally daring to meet the blue-eyed gaze of my tormentor, I was treated to the sort of smile that you'd flash at a fussing infant. Longing to scratch my shins, the best I could do was rub at my legs as if I were smoothing my skirt, and the fancy-dressed man just stood there staring. If wings had sprouted on my back I would have flown straight off to Newcastlewest then and there, to live on the side of the boreen where there was no noise and no crowds of people forever milling, milling, milling.

He took one handle of my trunk and I snatched up the other, afraid that he'd rob me if I wasn't careful. Leading the way, he navigated through the churning masses while I gaped at the exquisite plasterwork on the ceiling, all this elegance for the common people, for anyone who walked in. Not one big house in all of Ireland could compete with this Chicago train station.

A pause to rest, and his mouth was running again, expounding on the opportunity he'd found when he came from County Clare to Chicago, opportunity to move ahead and not be a drummer at Montgomery Ward forever. Opportunity all around, within a man's grasp if he was bold enough to take it, opportunity the real gold that paved the streets.

His speech concluded, he stood up and I did the same, and when he popped his hat on his head, I trusted that he was leaving, to go chase his opportunities with a different girl. With a theatric exhale, he lifted the trunk and I grabbed my end, to follow along behind my guide with the trunk connecting us so I wouldn't get lost. My head was free to swivel, looking first left, then right, then behind and again to the front, taking in the awesome spectacle of a train station that held more people than the entire population of Newcastlewest. There were dozens of young men, dressed in fine suits and polished shoes, hurrying to one place and another, doing business, in a race to make money. Off in the corners, huddled against the walls, were families of immigrants with all their belongings in bundles, cowering from the same things that frightened me. Pretty girls, farm girls, mingled with the drummers who flirted and pranced like peacocks in their city-bought finery. Everywhere that I looked, people were coming and others were going, but no one was standing still.

Outside on the street, the noise bellowed at full blast. The entire city was surely under construction, with a rattling of steam hammers that echoed off the walls of the tall buildings. A pall of sooty smoke hung over everything, the soot and ashes that the young man proclaimed as a grand indicator of progress, growth and development. Startled by the sudden appearance of a horse-drawn streetcar hurtling down the street, my jaw dropped in awe.

Where to? the cab driver asked. The drummer whispered to the driver, who began to laugh and said something about a girl like that not needing to worry about being sold into white slavery.

The Academy of Our Lady, I said, digging out the envelope from my satchel. The letter, the money and the train ticket were all limp as wet rags.

Sweet Jesus, another one for the convent, the cabbie said, rolling his eyes heavenward.

Go on, now, the drummer admonished the cabbie. She’ll say a prayer for your black soul if you deliver her safely to the good Sisters.

I’ll take you as far as the train station, the cabbie said. Returning my letter, he added with a friendly wink, I’m under orders here.

In you go, so, miss, the drummer said. And if you don’t mind my boldness, can I offer you one last piece of advice? Don’t go about with your mouth hanging open like you mean to catch flies. Looking like a greenhorn.

The cab lurched forward as the horse was given the whip, and if I looked like an addled dolt I didn't care. Never in all my sixteen years had I seen sheer cliffs made of terra cotta and brick, iced with enormous panes of glass. Everything was new, everywhere was busy. Even the polluted air seemed new, pulsating with life and a desire to grab hold of opportunity and wring every last drop of money out of it. This was a town that dared mere mortals to make something of themselves, a city with no other function than to transact business. Chicago was a wonder, a fascinating and irresistible wonder.

Working for the Sisters, are you? the cabbie asked as we crawled through the congested streets.

I don’t know, I said. Never once on my entire trip had I given a thought to what I would do once I arrived.

From him, I learned that the school was out in the country, a location that was deeper in the country ten years ago when the place was built, but wasn't the city growing closer every year. Before long, the driver concluded, the Academy would be right in the thick of it, and the young ladies of the codfish aristocracy would have a time of it, keeping their lace curtains free of soot.

While the cabbie prattled on, I leaned back in the seat and studied my surroundings. Attractive limestone facades lined the dusty street, rows of houses that looked serene and elegant, the homes of substantial people. Gradually my eyes began to tire and my view of Chicago became fuzzy, out of focus. Bustle was the word, and bustle was the theme of every street corner. More people lived here than I could fully comprehend; there were more stores and homes than I could count, and at that instant I vowed that I would be part of it all. Back in America for good, and when I alighted at the Polk Street station my heart was set on grabbing hold of my chance at opportunity.

You’re as green as a fresh shamrock, the cabbie said after I handed him all the money from the envelope. He counted out some coins and handed the rest back, explaining that I’d have to pay someone at the next station to take me on to the Academy. Finally, he pressed two copper coins into my palm. Light a candle for me and keep me in your prayers. Oh, and, try to find a lad with a farm wagon to take you. Looking as you do, going to the nuns, he’s likely to take you for free and you’ll have money in your pocket. There you are, the streets are paved with gold.

A silver twenty-five cent piece and two copper pennies jangled in my pocket when I presented myself to the nun who answered the front door, ready to work and already planning to seek new employment closer to town. She smiled with warmth and told me that classes didn’t begin until September, but she never said a word about a job or what I might be called on to do. Neither did she ask my name, which confirmed what the old German farmer had told me while we drove over dusty dirt roads from the station. All the Irish girls were called Mary by their employers, he’d said, and if I wanted to keep my position I’d not correct the error.

This is where you will sleep. Sister went through a door that opened into a dormitory. Ten beds lined one side of the room and a matched set of ten was directly across, with two traveling trunks placed at the foot of a couple of beds. A slow-witted boy tugged his end of the trunk and pulled me with it, stopping at the middle cot and dropping the heavy case with a thump. Our third guest, and you shall meet your colleagues at evening prayer. Before dinner. In the chapel.

They left me alone, to do what I had no idea. Feeling abandoned, I slumped to the edge of the bed and scanned the room. Lace curtains hung at the windows that were shut up against the heat of August, filmy fabric that made lovely patterns on the floor. My empty stomach growled, asking what time dinner might be, but Sister failed to mention the schedule. Would they expect me to serve, or to cook? I took off my hat and stored it in my trunk, then sat waiting.

Silence, like a tomb, begged to broken with sound. The tears threatened to erupt again, driven back by prayers to the Blessed Mother and St. Bridget. Unlike anything I’d experienced in Ireland, the heat in Chicago was intense, making this room stifling. Soon the air would be gone, and I found myself gasping, sweating like a horse in a lather with a heart pounding out of my chest. A different nun appeared at the door, her face resembling a dried apple set into a starched wimple, and I almost fell to my knees in gratitude for salvation from certain death.

Not out of your traveling clothes yet? she asked, as if I was guilty of laziness. Sure and I was starting off on the wrong foot, but before I could ask for two minutes she was handing me an apron, white as snow, without a single stain. Early arrivals begin lessons early. Come, come, we are always prompt at the Academy of Our Lady. Cook will be quite put out if her pupils are not present for the entire lesson.

Sister was off and I had no choice but to follow, pulling on the apron and trying to memorize every landmark as it was pointed out. The way to the chapel, the way to the classrooms, the way to the kitchen and the refectory, all of it came at a pace as rapid as the nun’s steps. This was how things were done in Chicago, fast and then faster, never walking if it was possible to run. My weariness disappeared; my limbs moving with electric energy that I absorbed from the air around me.

The words of the drummer and the cabbie and the German farmer rattled in my head, sorted into a new order that promised something undefined but filled with possibility. With pleasure, I would discard my Irish ways and become like the well-dressed women I had seen out on the streets, shopping for things that I had yet to touch, in stores I had yet to call in. Never again would I roam, pull up my roots and search for a new piece of ground on which to grow. I would learn how to be an American and never look back. Back for good, and I’d do whatever it took to stay there.

TWO

Washington, D.C., 1933

The gate of the cattle pen squeaks, opening to release the Judas bull and closing to trap the doomed steer, a circle of sound that spins around Danny’s head. A peculiar smell, cattle mixed with disinfectant and beef grease, turns his stomach. A bright light burns into his eyes, like the headlamp of the streetcar hurtling down Halsted, and he squeezes his eyelids tight against the glare.

Take me dancing, Danny.

Not the cattle pen gate, it is only a wheel turning on a linoleum floor.

Jule? he calls out, but his voice is so weak that his own ears barely hear the word. Jule? Is it you?

So many voices, so many people. Accustomed to solitude, he finds that he often thinks he hears her but it turns out to be one of the nurses talking to a patient, or a visitor chatting with the man in the bed next to his. The sun is intensely bright in a monochrome room, a white world filled with empty space. His fingertips rub against fabric. Coarse. His bare feet detect the scratchy texture of cheap cotton that has been bleached too many times. Whiter than white. The cart wheel continues its repetitive tune, hanging heavy on his eyelids.

Take me dancing.

Abruptly, the wheel’s dreary song ends, replaced by the harsh scrape of metal against a rubberized floor. The brightness grows brighter and he squints at the face of a woman who stares at him.

Good afternoon, Mr. Hanlon, she says, smiling in a clinical way. I'm Nurse Scanlon, the night nurse.

Dan turns his head, to examine the rows of beds that fill the ward. In one cot after another are men like himself, those who toil invisibly behind the scenes of the Federal Government until they toil themselves to death. Not one of the patients is a resident of Hooverville, someone who has toiled until his toil is no longer needed after the stock market crashed in 1929. He is surrounded by people with jobs and a steady income, the paying customers.

A night nurse in the middle of the day? he asks. If she is trying to be funny, he doesn't find her humorous.

Just that I come in early most days. I'll be here overnight if you need something. She checks his pulse, touches his forehead with cold hands. "Anyway, I’ve brought some soup and tea, and let’s see how y’all handle it before we think about the

Reviews for Lace Curtain Irish

[cianoh · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A brilliant debut from an exciting new writer."Lace Curtain Irish" provides a unique glimpse into an immigrant family in Chicago at the turn of the last century, yet the narrative is timeless. The Hanlons are in the melting pot, but the melting isn't such an easy process.As the story opens, Julia Hanlon is on her way to Chicago to rejoin her large family. She reflects on her mother's reason for bringing her to Ireland and then leaving her there for thirteen years. Determined to fit in, to not give her parents a reason to send her away (or send her into the convent), she finds that the allure of the American way of life is too strong to resist, yet too dangerous to grasp when her father expects her to behave like a proper Irish lass from the back of beyond.Julia has to rely on her brother Daniel to speak up for her much-desired independence, but he fails to see the need for haste until it is too late to save Julia from descending into genteel poverty, saddled with a husband and children she never wanted. Aware that he has betrayed his sister yet again, Daniel pulls back while Julia struggles to maintain the close family bonds that she was denied as a child in Ireland.Through Daniel's narrative, the reader comes to learn of the family secrets that were hidden behind lace curtains and a facade of gentility. Those secrets drive a wedge between Julia and Daniel, until he finally finds the courage to confront their mother.Spanning the era between the World's Fair of 1893 through the Century of Progress in 1933, this is a book that, once started, you can't put down.

[P. L. O'Sullivan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A brilliant debut from an exciting new writer.

"Lace Curtain Irish" provides a unique glimpse into an immigrant family in Chicago at the turn of the last century, yet the narrative is timeless. The Hanlons are in the melting pot, but the melting isn't such an easy process.

As the story opens, Julia Hanlon is on her way to Chicago to rejoin her large family. She reflects on her mother's reason for bringing her to Ireland and then leaving her there for thirteen years. Determined to fit in, to not give her parents a reason to send her away (or send her into the convent), she finds that the allure of the American way of life is too strong to resist, yet too dangerous to grasp when her father expects her to behave like a proper Irish lass from the back of beyond.

Julia has to rely on her brother Daniel to speak up for her much-desired independence, but he fails to see the need for haste until it is too late to save Julia from descending into genteel poverty, saddled with a husband and children she never wanted. Aware that he has betrayed his sister yet again, Daniel pulls back while Julia struggles to maintain the close family bonds that she was denied as a child in Ireland.

Through Daniel's narrative, the reader comes to learn of the family secrets that were hidden behind lace curtains and a facade of gentility. Those secrets drive a wedge between Julia and Daniel, until he finally finds the courage to confront their mother.

Spanning the era between the World's Fair of 1893 through the Century of Progress in 1933, this is a book that, once started, you can't put down.