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A unique, ruminative biography-a fascinating excursion into the American underworld at the dawn of the twentieth century, the life of an unrespectable Irish woman, and the hidden inner life of any woman who has tried to choose the unconventional path
Riverhead
September 2005
Featuring: May Duignan
320 pages ISBN: 1573223204 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
Nuala O'Faolain, the author of three consecutive New York
Times bestsellers, has come upon a story that is not only a
perfect match for her literary gifts but also takes her
career in a surprising and rich new direction. This Irish
woman writer who achieved international fame with a
remarkably candid appraisal of her own unorthodox life has
taken as her subject another daughter of Ireland-this one a
notorious criminal and unrepentant, independent woman. The legend says that May was a tall girl with glorious hair
and big blue eyes, compellingly attractive to men. At
nineteen, she stole her family's savings and ran away from
her home in rural Ireland to America-first Nebraska, then
Chicago at the time of the World's Fair, and then on to New
York. In these new American cities, she worked as a
grifter, a confidence trickster, a prostitute, a sometime
showgirl-earned her moniker and was hailed in tabloids
as "Queen of the Underworld." And then she fell in love
with a big-league criminal, followed him to Paris where
they successfully robbed the American Express, then were
apprehended, tried, and sent to prison. May survived
prison, returned to America, and was reborn again and again-
falling in love, lapsing back into the criminal life,
flirting with legitimacy, writing her memoirs. O'Faolain brings a sympathetic scrutiny to this
extraordinary life story, reaching across the decades for
points of connection and understanding. May was born in
post-famine Ireland and died in the world of telephones,
sportscars, and movies, in 1929, just before the stock-
market crash. Is there a woman's experience they can share?
An Irishwoman's experience? An outsider's? In the hands of
one of our most astute and gifted memoirists, The Story of
Chicago May is not only a tale well-told, but an inquiry
into the telling of any life story. "There are pioneer
journeys still to be made to the edge of the territory
where we know how to be sympathetic," O'Faolain
writes. "Shine the beam of attention out there and the dark
recoils, and the frontier of human settlement moves
forward."
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