Nowadays, when sleep doesn't come readily, I close my eyes and go back over sixty-five years to County Cavan ... I see myself with a bucket in each hand, go through the gate where the cows stand waiting to be brought in for milking. I tread carefully on the seven stepping stones Dad put there so we need not walk in the mud. Past the big puddle with the blue clay streak where we shaped cups and saucers for our wee house. Past the patch of cowslips and over the style into the castle meadow. The grass is longer here, and I search for trembling-grass which, no matter how still the day, shakes and...

When, as a young girl in County Cavan, the author wanted to have an excuse to give to her mother when she came home from her ramblings, she would tell her, "I've just been over to Connolly's." The Connollys didn't exist-they were an invention of young Jessica's fertile imagination. So, when she came to write her first novels, what better than to make them come to life? In Connolly's Pass, we begin to follow the story of Rosie Connolly. After the tragic death of her husband, she sets about raising her six children in a small Irish village, with her pride in their achievements overshadowed only...