IRISH EYES, a turn of 20th Century tale, features a determined young woman named Rose O’Neill. Her "Irish eyes" capture the heart of a young American soldier who travels to Ireland. Rose works in her family’s pub on one of the remote Aran Islands, where fishing and sheep are the only industries.  Adam Blakely from New York has come to return letters from Rose to her now-dead brother since the two men served together in Cuba.  

Adam invites Rose to come to New York and marry him. He has to go early because his father has a sudden health scare, but Rose agrees to follow. She hears no more, and when she finally arrives, alone, scared, and in an awkward condition, she learns that Adam is engaged to a society girlfriend.

We see the dazzling – and grimy – city through the eyes of this Irish immigrant. She takes any jobs going, placing her in a large hotel during a tragic fire. Joe Kavanaugh, a firefighter, enters her life in the nick of time. Further events in the story chronicle the decades, and the kind of people who wrought change to help others, or who did not want change, to serve their greed. As Rose makes the best of her life, seldom looking back but keenly aware of what she has lost, we see the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the Great War, the Spanish Flu, women’s suffrage, and more landmarks of those years.  The research feels solid and detailed, attitudes conveyed through individuals rather than statistics. While romance is certainly present, it’s hard to call this a romance novel; rather, women’s fiction.  

I learned a great deal, and the two halves of society shown remind me of the novel Kane And Abel; the entitled class and the immigrant class, each keeping to themselves and building the city a brick at a time, a garment at a time. Unlike today, when oceans can be crossed in hours, those who left Ireland were seldom able to return and made a new life. Author Hope C. Tarr and IRISH EYES tell the story of thousands, in the person of this one young woman. Her book will make many friends.