Officer Owen McNulty is new to his ward. Originally from high-society, he is not so well received as the Irish officers who have come up in the ranks. He remembers the day he knew his mission. It was the day Officer Dan O'Toole died while running to save a little russet-haired immigrant girl out of the path of a fast approaching streetcar at the curve ~ Dead Man's Curve ~ at Broadway. Owen's life calling became clear. If only he had been quicker to react that day. Caught between two worlds, among those he served or those he had left behind? He now knew in his heart he was where he was supposed to be.
Grace sketched angles she wanted to photograph so as not to waste her film. She had a nanny day job but needed an additional source of earning money to be able to bring her mother from Ireland. She is leery of policemen because of their dour treatment on the street she had seen before coming to New York. It seems every time she turns around, she is running into Officer McNulty.
The harbored thoughts from her past keep Grace captive until she realizes there is One who knows her better than all that has come before. Separation from her mother in the workhouse, being sent to America when her mother married, with Grace believing it was a sacrifice when instead it was a rescue. Love releases to be found. As Grace gives from her heart she realizes she is loved in return. She sees herself as worthy rather than the haunting echoes of past words of discouragement. She has indeed found true freedom.
Seek his face evermore.
Grace McCaffery hopes that the bustling streets of New York hold all the promise that the lush hills of Ireland did not. As her efforts to earn enough money to bring her mother to America fail, she wonders if her new Brownie camera could be the answer. But a casual stroll through a beautiful New York City park turns into a hostile run-in with local gangsters, who are convinced her camera holds the first and only photos of their elusive leader. A policeman with a personal commitment to help those less fortunate finds Grace attractive and longs to help her, but Grace believes such men cannot be trusted. Spread thin between her quest to rescue her mother, do well in a new nanny job, and avoid the gang intent on intimidating her, Grace must put her faith in unlikely sources to learn the true meaning of courage and forgiveness.
My brother sent me a Christmas gift of a Brownie Hawkeye camera that used 620 film. I mainly took photos of our dog, Taffy, and her pups, so I didn't get into as much trouble as Grace innocently did!
to read and review. This review was written in my own words. No other compensation was received.***
1
DECEMBER 1900
“May I take your photograph, miss?”
Grace McCaffery spun around. She had passed through the
inspections without a problem and was on her way downstairs,
where she would meet the aid society worker. What now?
“A photograph?” A man stood smiling at her, next to a large
camera. She’d only seen one of these machines before, and that
was on the ship.
“Why?” She bit her lip. Was everything about to fall apart now?
“For prosperity. It’s your first day in America.” He handed
her a small piece of paper. “My name and address, should you
later wish to see it. It will only take a moment of your time, and
then you are free to continue on.”
Free sounded good. “What do I do?”
“Stand under that window—” he pointed toward one of
the massive windows—“and look this way.” Streams of late-afternoon sun shone in through the ornamental ironwork, tracing odd shapes on the tiled floor.
She did as he asked.
“Now look up, miss.” He snapped his fingers. “Look toward
the camera.”
Her eyelids were iron weights, but she forced herself to look
his way, wanting to get it over with.
After she heard a slight pop coming from the camera, he
dismissed her. “Welcome to America!”
America! Ma should see Ellis Island and all the people milling about. Grace sat down on a bench just to the right of the
stairs to collect the thoughts rambling around in her head like
loose marbles. Imagine, a girl like her, now free in America.
She would not have envisioned it herself a few weeks ago.
Exhausted, she dropped her face to her hands as she relived
what had led her here.
~*~
“Must go to the workhouse.” Huge hands snatched wee Grace
from her bed. “Your da is dead. Behind in your rent and got
no means.”
Grace kicked with all her might. “Ma!”
An elbow to her belly. Burning. She heaved.
“Blasted kid!” The policeman tossed her onto a wagon like
garbage.
“Ma!”
“I’m here, Grace. Don’t cry.” Her mother cradled her as the
wagon jolted forward. “Oh, my heart. You are special, wee one.
So special to God.”
Heat emanated from the burning cottage, the temperature
torturing Grace’s face. She hid against her mother’s shoulder.
Later, they were pulled apart and herded into a building.
A dark hallway. The sound of water dripping.
Stairs. Up the stairs. Following other children. So many children. Was her mother dead?
~*~
The sound of heels clacking down steps brought Grace back to
the present. She sat up straight and watched hordes of people
march down the stairs. They were divided into three groups
according to destination.
She knew her mother had loved her, but God? Her mother
had been wrong about that. God loved good people like Ma.
Not Grace. Grace knew she was not good enough for God.
So many of the people passing in front of her were mere
children, most with parents but some without. Grace wondered
if they were as afraid as she had been when she was separated
from her mother in the workhouse, the place Irish folks were
taken to when they had nowhere else to go. All these people
now seemed to have a destination, though. A new start. Like
her. In America she hoped she could mend her fumbling ways
and merit favor.
A wee lass approached the stairs with her hand over her
mouth, the registration card pinned to her coat wrinkled and
stained with tears. Grace was about to go to her and tell her
everything would be fine. After all, this great hall, this massive
building, was not in Ireland. They were in the land of the free.
They’d just seen Lady Liberty’s glowing copper figure in the
harbor, hadn’t they?
But the lass, obviously having mustered her courage, scrambled down the steps and into the mass of people. Would the
child be all right? No mother. No parents at all. It had happened
to Grace. Free one day, sentenced by poverty the next.
She pulled her hand away from her own mouth. In the
workhouse she’d had this nightmare and cried out. She’d been
whipped.
Not now.
Not ever again.
She struggled to remember the song her mother sang to her
at bedtime.
“Thou my best thought by day or by night . . .” She
couldn’t remember any more of it. She’d forgotten. The truth
was, she didn’t know if everything would be all right.
She rose and followed the orders she’d been given right
before the photographer had approached her. Down the steps to
the large room where the lady from the charity would meet her.
She rubbed her free hand along the handrail as she walked,
barely able to believe she was in another country now, far across
the Atlantic Ocean. If it hadn’t been for the miserable voyage in
steerage, the stench from sweaty, sick passengers that remained
even now, and wobbling knees weak from too little food, she
might believe she was dreaming. Had it really been just a few
weeks ago when she’d sat opposite the workhouse master’s desk
and twisted the edge of her apron between the fingers of her
right hand as he spoke to her?
“Eight years you’ve been here, Grace,” he’d said.
“Aye.” She’d stopped counting.
“You are a young woman now, with some potential to be
productive. Yet there is no employment in this country of yours.
Nothing you can do.” He was British and had little patience for
the Irish.
She’d held her head low.
“And so, Grace, you’ve been sponsored to leave the workhouse and go to America.” He dipped the nib of his pen in an
inkwell and scribbled, not looking up.
“What do you mean, sir?”
“America. You leave from Dublin in two days. I’ve got your
papers in order. And this.” He pushed an envelope toward her.
She remembered that at the time she’d worried about her
fingernails when she’d held out her hand. She looked at them
now. Grime on the ship had taken its toll. The master would
not like that.
He is not here.
She touched that very same envelope now, crinkled in her
apron pocket. It contained the name of the ship, the destination, and at the bottom,
Sponsored by S. P. Feeny.
She mumbled under her breath. “Ma married him for this.”
To provide a future for Grace.
The line of people moved slowly. Grace sucked in her breath.
Not long now.
“Mama!”
She turned and watched a red-faced lad scurry down the
steps and into the open arms of his mother, who reprimanded
him for wandering away.
Grace had begged to speak to her own mother the day the
workhouse master told her she was going to America. He hadn’t
sent for her because her mother was no longer an inmate, but
a free woman married to that lawman, that peeler named Sean
Patrick Feeny.
But Grace’s mother had come anyway, not to the workhouse
but to the docks.
“Hurry along,” the immigration worker urged her now.
Grace thought about S. P. Feeny’s note again as she entered
a room packed with people. Not knowing whether the charity lady would need to see it, she reached into her pocket and
pulled it out. She glanced around and found a vacant spot on
a bench.
“Wait until you hear your name called,” a man in a brown
suit said to the crowd.
There were more workers in that place than she expected.
In Ireland only a handful of employees kept the inmates in line.
She reminded herself again that she was in America.
People care
about folks here, now, don’t they?
She opened the note and reread the part at the end, the
words her mother’s husband had scrawled there.
Your mother wants you out of the workhouse. With no
other options, I have arranged for you to go to America,
where you will find work and no doubt prosper. Pin this
to your dress for the journey. It is the name of a man my
connections say will take good care of you in New York
and arrange a job. I have written him to let him know
when you will arrive.
S. P.
The immigration official upstairs had told her not to expect
this man to meet her, but rather someone who worked for him,
mostly likely a woman from an immigrant aide society. “Don’t
worry,” he’d told her. “They’ll have your name.”
As much as Grace wanted to crumple up the paper and toss
it away, she dared not. Following directions had been essential
to getting along in the workhouse, and she had no reason to
abandon that thinking now. She had managed to survive back
there, even though she was apart from her mother, who had
worked out of Grace’s sight until she got married and left the
workhouse altogether. Surviving was a victory and perhaps the
best she could have hoped for then.
She glanced down at the writing again. S. P. Feeny was a
peeler, a policeman, like those who tore Grace and her mother
from their home when Grace was but ten years old. Grace had
thought her life was as good as over when she heard about the
marriage. But now she was in America.
She blinked back tears as she thought about her unknown
future. What if her father had been right when, so long ago,
he’d told her she needed him to survive, could not do it alone?
His death had forced them into the workhouse, and she had
survived without him then, hadn’t she? But now? Now she really
was alone and she was not sure she could endure. And yet,
she must.
She mentally rehearsed her instructions, the ones Feeny had
written down. She’d done what she’d been told so far.
Now she was supposed to wait. But how long?
Running her fingers down her skirt to wipe away perspiration, she hoped she would not say the wrong thing when this
stranger claimed her. Would they understand her in America?
Did she speak proper English well enough? As much as her
stomach churned, she mustn’t appear sick, even though the doctor had already hurriedly examined her along with her fellow
passengers. She’d heard stories. They sent sick people to a hospital and often they were never heard from again. Perhaps they
executed the ones who didn’t die. Or they put them back on the
ship to return to Ireland. As bad as it was facing an unknown
future in America, at least there was hope here that could not
be found in the workhouse. So long as they let her stay.
She glanced over at a family. Mother, father, son, and daughter clung to each other. They would make it. Together they had
strength. Grace had no one.
Soon a crowd of tall men jabbering in a language she didn’t
understand entered the room. Grace squeezed the note in
her hand. As much as she didn’t want S. P. Feeny’s help, she’d
needed a sponsor to start this new life. She had no choice but
to trust his instruction.
If there is one thing a policeman like
Feeny knows, it’s the rules. Whether or not they abide by them is
another matter.
“Where you from?” a tawny-haired lass sitting next to her asked.
“County Louth.” She thought it best not to mention the
workhouse.
The girl nodded.
Good. She didn’t seem to want to ask anything else.
After a few moments, sensing the girl’s nervousness, not
unlike her own, Grace gave in. “And you? Where are you from?”
The girl sat up straight. “County Down.”
“Oh. Not far.” Grace swallowed hard. They were both far
from home.
An attendant stood on a box and raised his voice. “Mary
Montgomery? Miss Mary Montgomery, please.”
The girl next to Grace stood and went to him.
“I’m afraid there’s been a mistake, miss.”
A brief moment later the lass was gone from the room.
Escorted off somewhere. Grace turned to the men seated behind
her. “Where are they taking her?”
They shrugged. Only one of them met her gaze. “Don’t be
worrying, lass. Could be she’s in the wrong place. Could be her
family didn’t come to claim her. Could be ’bout anything, don’t
you know?”
Grace tried to breathe, but the room felt hot and noisy. “
You
can do this,”
she heard her mother say from the recesses of her mind.
In the workhouse, everyone was the same—wore matching
gray uniforms, used identical spoons, slurped the same watery
stirabout, marched together from dining hall to dormitory at
the same exact time day after day, month after month, year after
year. It was a routine she could count on.
She glanced around at the faces near her. Square jaws,
rounded chins. Black hair, locks the color of spun flax. Brightly
colored clothing, suits the color of mud. So many differences.
And so many tongues. Where she’d come from, there had been
no question of how to act, what to say, who to look at. But here?
She turned and kept her eyes on her feet and the trim of the
red petticoat her mother had given her to travel in when she’d
met her at the docks.
Oh, Ma! When Grace had been able to look into her mother’s
green-gray eyes, she found assurance. On the ship, Grace had
tried to emblazon her mother’s face on her memory so it would
always be there when she needed to see it. She’d even sketched
her mother on some paper with a charcoal pencil another passenger gave her. She had the sketch in her bag with her meager
belongings. Not much, but all she had now.
“Thanks be to God.” “God have mercy.” “God bless our souls.”
“The grace of God on all who enter.” . . . Her mother never failed
to acknowledge God. She was a good woman. The best. Grace
was so far away now from that umbrella of assurance.
She focused on the immigration official calling out names.
Survival was human instinct, and humans adapted. She’d
learned to do it once before. Perhaps she could manage to exorcise her father’s voice from her head, the one that told her she
was incapable, and actually make a life, a good life, for herself
in America.
Grace’s mother had held her at arm’s length when they said
good-bye on the docks in Dublin. She’d rubbed Grace’s cheeks
with her thumbs. “The best thing for you is to go to America.
You are not a child anymore. I could not let you stay in the
workhouse. Don’t I know how hard it is for a grown woman to
keep her dignity there.”
Grace had tried pleading with her. “Take me home with
you. I’ll be polite to S. P. . . . I promise.”
But her mother wouldn’t hear of it. “There’s no life here for
you, Grace. Fly free, Daughter. Find your way. ’Tis a blessing
you can go.”
Grace had told her mother she couldn’t do it. Not alone.
Not without her.
“Listen to me,” her mother had said, tugging Grace’s chin
upward with her finger. “I don’t care what lies your father once
spoke to you, darlin’. To us both. Pity his departed soul that he
left us with no choice but the workhouse. But promise me you
will not think of the things he said to you. Remember instead
this: You are smart. You are important. You are able.”
If she could prosper as her mother had asked her to, then
perhaps her mother might choose to come to America too, a
place where she would not need S. P. Feeny. Grace would make
it happen. Somehow. She had to. Her hands trembled as she
held tight to her traveling bag.
~*~
Grace’s face grew hot. She lifted a shoulder to her chin, hoping
her embarrassment didn’t show. She didn’t want to speak to a
peeler— or whatever they called them in America. But she was
stuck, shoved into a hot electric-powered car with more people
than she thought it should safely hold. The man had addressed
her and asked her a question. She had to respond. She spoke
toward her feet. “I am well. I come from County Louth.”
The large man leaned down toward her. “You say you are
from County Louth, miss?”
“I am.”
“Is that so?” He let loose a low whistle. “My people come from
Tullamore. We might be neighbors or cousins or something.”
The woman with Grace, who’d introduced herself as Mrs.
Hawkins, chuckled. “You’re all cousins, love, all of you from
ole Erin.”
Grace was no kin to men like that, and if she were, she
would disown them straight away.
These are the men who force
poor families from their homes and send them to workhouses the
minute they can’t pay rent.
There was a lull in the conversation as the car pulled them
through an intersection. She heard the peeler’s breath catch. She
dared to look at him. He was staring out at the street. He did
not seem formidable at all and perhaps was even a little uneasy
riding on the streetcar. Odd, that.
Grace glanced back down, studying the shoes surrounding
her, trying to focus on the future instead of dwelling on the
past. She was in the “Land of Opportunity,” after all. She hoped
not to associate with folks she didn’t care to.
She clutched the bag containing her treasured drawing
pencil, wee pad of paper, and a small card bearing the address
of that Ellis Island photographer, Mr. Sherman, who had taken
her photograph.
Robin Jones Gunn, bestselling author of the much-loved Christy Miller Series and the award-winning Sisterchicks® series, has had more than 4.5 million copies of her books sold worldwide. Her frequent speaking engagements have taken her around the globe. Robin and her husband live in Hawaii and have a grown son and daughter. You can learn more at Robin's website.
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