TESSA'S LANDING

Brady’s historical novel follows a young Irishwoman’s journey across the Atlantic during the Great Famine to a new life in America.

The story opens in September 1846 on Achill Island, where 16-year-old Tessa O’Melia is being sent off to America to marry a stranger. (“Just don’t be foolish, follow your instincts and stay away from strange men,” her mother warns.) Her family is starving, and her father is in jail, having been accused of a murder that was really an accident. Sailing on the fever-ridden ship Dorcas, Tessa meets a collection of companions who will shape her story. Nuala is a starving orphan; Mavis is a sharp-tongued, prayerful spinster; Nifty is the ship’s apprentice, with whom Tessa shares an innocent romance. After 42 days at sea, Tessa lands in New York, but the man she was sent to marry never comes to the docks. Lost and nearly preyed upon, she’s taken in by Daniel, a kind blacksmith from Donegal who walks with a limp. They marry, a son arrives, and Tessa slowly builds a life, sewing fabric scraps into small toys she sells at the market. She makes friends with Kitty, who has a club foot, and Jeanette, an escaped enslaved woman who lives in the attic of her building. Letters from Ireland bring news that her father has avoided being hanged and may be heading for America. Mavis dies of a fever and leaves Tessa a gift that changes her prospects. The narrative is capably told and heartfelt, effectively building a cozy and twee atmosphere, and Brady’s research on the famine, the crossing, and the squalor of Manhattan’s Five Points is evident. Characters die and get into trouble, but the telling fails to locate much tragic irony, black humor, or deep character development in their stories—the result is closer to melodrama than genuine tragedy. Saintly Tessa’s longing for Nifty, for Ireland, and for her father sometimes feels repetitive and talismanic, though it is evocative of a lonely immigrant’s experience of rumination and loss.

A heartfelt immigrant story that goes a bit soft on its painful material.