A Trip to the Bountiful: The Walking People by Mary Beth Keane

Protagonist Greta Cahill, cast aside early in her life as a “simple girl,” is destined to face gross underestimation not only of her intelligence but of her ability to lead a full life. The Walking People demonstrates the fullness of that life as Greta leaves her small community in the west of Ireland for the threatening yet hopeful streets of New York, where she discovers love, work and a new kind of family.

Like so many immigrants in the 1950s, Greta faces the struggle of leaving behind her pre-immigration life, and the secrets that she keeps maintain an even stronger separation between her American life and her Irish past. The depth of the characters Keane weaves recreates the dynamic experience of the American immigrant, and does not speak exclusively to an Irish audience.

“I think of Greta’s story not necessarily as an Irish story, but more of a woman’s story,” Keane told Irish America. 

Keane’s writing of The Walking People took two years, though her imagination had taken hold of the story long before that. Greta’s story emerged organically in Keane’s mind as she allowed her characters to trudge their own paths. Keane’s dynamic personalities seem to find their own destiny through her pen.

“As time went on, and Greta became more vivid and more surprising, my passion for the story became focused on representing her accurately and bringing her to life so that others could know her as well as I do.

“I knew Greta was going to end up in New York, but I had no idea what circumstances would drive her there or if she’d be alone or part of a group. For a while I thought she might end up returning to Ireland, but then when the time came, it felt like a familiar decision – one I’d seen in books and movies a little too often,” Keane said. “And by then I knew Greta was more surprising than most people had ever given her credit for, so I let her stay in New York and make her life there.”

Keane’s remarkable achievement of entering the world of the Irish travellers* in this story is one not often undertaken by writers. The character Michael Ward leaves his past in the travelling communities, often referred to derogatively as “tinkers,” to go to New York with Greta and her free-spirited sister Johanna. Very little literature exists from within these communities. The vast majority of the information was presented by observers of the lifestyle of those in these camps.

“The travellers were difficult to research because it’s not as if one can walk into a camp and start asking questions. They have a strong oral tradition, but very little is written down for posterity,” Keane said. “I interviewed friends and family about their memories of travellers, and then to get inside the traveller point-of-view I relied on a few well-researched books written by scholars who managed to gain trust and access; one even lived as a traveller for over a year. And I looked at many, many photographs of caravans and camps from the 1950s, 60s and 70s.” Keane also spent time in the National Library in Dublin, poring over newspaper archives to find accounts of the communities.

​
Nster.com