ANNE DONALDSON'S debut novel, And They Never Looked Back, grew from her lifelong love of history and genealogy.
The story follows a family who leave the Irish midlands in the 19th century, crossing the Atlantic before travelling through the Erie Canal and settling in Escanaba, Michigan.
At the centre of the story is Anna, the last surviving member of her family, who finds letters from Ireland among her mother’s things and begins recording the story of her family and their new life in America.
Donaldson actually grew up in the same house in County Laois where her great-aunt Anna lived generations earlier, and Anna's life story and letters home served as a source of inspiration for the novel.
Donaldson first came by the idea while preparing for her sister's 80th birthday.
“We thought, what are we going to give her for a present? Well, we will give her a family tree,” she said.
Donaldson loved the research and became fascinated by the journey her great-aunt and her family had made from Ireland to America.
Anna endured considerable loss over the years, including the deaths of family members and children.
Despite the family initially doing reasonably well, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 eventually wiped out what little they had left.
Donaldson spoke to people who later bought Anna’s former home and learned that it had been sold by the bank because she was in debt.
“She would have been in her 60s,” Donaldson said.
The Erie Canal, in Upstate New York (WikiCommons/Photo by Josua Karn)“I didn’t think to write this story; it told me it had to be written,” she said.
“I felt like somebody getting a call to religion or something. I had to write it.”
Writing in this way was a very new experience for Donaldson.
“I had never written a novel, and it was rather a novel idea,” she laughed.
The title came to her as she imagined what it must have felt like for Irish emigrants setting off across the ocean.
“I just felt there was no point in her saying ‘dear old Ireland’ or ‘poor old Ireland'; she just gets on with it,” Donaldson said of her main character.
Life in rural Ireland in the late 19th century also changed how she approached the opening of the novel.
Donaldson first thought to begin with a great jolly wedding celebration, but her historical research led her to change her mind.
“I discovered in that era that kind of carry-on wasn’t going on because everyone was just too damn depressed, between famines and poverty,” she said.
“Rural Ireland really suffered during that time.”
A last glimpse of Ireland; Sheep's Head, County Cork (WikiCommons/ Photo by Petra15)Although Donaldson initially set out to write about strong women, she says the book ultimately became a story about emigration itself.
“I don’t think there has been enough credit given to the strong women who emigrated,” she said.
Donaldson also drew on her own experience of moving within Ireland, from Co Laois to Co Cork, to understand some of the challenges faced by people arriving somewhere totally new.
“Knowing nobody, you have to get used to things quite quickly,” she said. “You have to very quickly read the street and know who’s a friend and who isn’t.”
Her research also showed how the Irish were part of a much wider movement of people crossing the Atlantic from nearly every corner of Europe.
“There are reports from people who travelled on the boats, particularly if they were travelling alone, sticking together for life,” she said.
Writing the novel led her to reflect on modern attitudes towards immigration.
“There is sometimes a very negative view of people who come to live in the country, and maybe not enough openness to their different cultures.”
And They Never Looked Back is Donaldson’s first novel, but not her last.
She is already working on her second, this time turning her attention closer to home.
Donaldson is exploring the history of the British military in Ballincollig, with the novel being developed as a love story connected to the surrounding area.
For now, it has the working title of Ballincollig Love Story, although she admits that finding its eventual title is proving difficult.
And what advice does she have for anyone hoping to follow her into the world of fiction?
“Just go at it,” she said.
“You can’t edit blank pages.”
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See More: Anne Donaldson, Author, Books, County Cork, Irish Emigration
