A renowned thief and murderer, Mulvey abandoned Duane, only to return and sabotage her life in Ireland. Mary Duane discovers that Pius Mulvey, her former fiancé and the brother of her deceased husband, is among the overcrowded group of disease-ridden steerage passengers. Another passenger, American journalist Grantley Dixon, is lured to America by business and his thinly veiled affair with Lady Merridith. The family's beautiful nanny, Mary Duane, is with them, having fled a life of poverty, prostitution, and extreme tragedy.

Lord Merridith and his family board the titular ship in 1847, bound for New York, leaving behind an Ireland devastated by famine and strife. 4-city author tour.Joseph O'Connor's impressive historical novel, Star of the Sea, examines the unsettled personal tragedies among a group of interrelated characters and their difficulties in disregarding the past. The engrossing, well-structured tale will hold historical fiction fans rapt. Through flashbacks, the complicated narrative paints a vivid picture of the rigors of life in Ireland in the mid-19th century.

One of these passengers is on a mission to commit murder, and another is the fated victim. And there is, of course, Kingscourt's wife, with whom Dixon is having an ill-advised affair. Also aboard is the young widow, Mary Duane, a nanny for the Kingscourt children who shares a history of intimacies with both Kingscourt and Mulvey. There's Earl David Merridith of Kingscourt, one of the few passengers in first class, who has evicted thousands of his tenants for nonpayment of rent, dooming them and their families to almost certain death by starvation. There's Pius Mulvey, 'a sticklike limping man from Connemara' known to the passengers as 'the monster' or 'the ghost,' who shuffles menacingly around the ship and is the subject of many a rumor. Reporter who intersperses his narrative with reportage and interviews as he describes the intrigue that unfolds during the 26-day journey.

The novel takes the form of a personal account written by passenger G. and shortlisted for Irish Novel of the Year, this brooding new historical fiction by novelist, playwright and critic O'Connor ( Cowboys and Indians) chronicles the mayhem aboard Star of the Sea, a leaky old sailing ship crossing from Ireland to New York during the bitter winter of 1847, its steerage crammed to the bulkheads with diseased and starving refugees from the Irish potato famine.

Star of the Sea by Joseph O'Connor