The Pirates of Clontarf

Book excerpt: Polly O'Brien is a girl of twelve who is desperately trying to save her father from the clutches of alcoholism. While attending Catholic school in the 1950s, she aspires to write and figure out life's mysteries without much guidance. Experiencing a frightening existence, she escapes by writing a book with the help of a ghost. Polly is visited by a spirit as she begins to pen a tale about the Irish Potato Famine. The apparition helps her to create by relating her own Famine story, and offers some advice. Dailearie O'Donovan, the visitation, tells of her adventures during the Famine in Ireland. By pirating and taking grain to county Mayo where their relatives previously died, she and her brothers hope to be the hand of God's bounty. This narrative describes coming of age before the era of information and the Internet, and the horrors of An Gorta Mór, The Great Hunger. It recounts the real difficulties that are often experienced by children and adults alike that have lived with someone suffering from alcoholism. Both the spirit and the very young author eventually find solutions to the devastating problems they both encounter