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

Michael finds work in New York as a sandhog,* or urban miner. This presented Keane with another challenge and opportunity to portray a very different way of life than that of a traveller.

“I needed to see what he was seeing, so I asked my father, who is a retired sandhog, if he would help me get permission to go down into a tunnel and see for myself. He agreed and came down with me,” Keane said.

Keane drew on her own family’s and her community’s experiences as immigrants in the United States. Her  parents both hail from the west of Ireland – Galway and Mayo. Native to Pearl River, New York, Keane’s early childhood years as the oldest of three sisters were years immersed in the Irish-American culture of her town.

“Every summer, a few of my grade school classmates would disappear ‘home’ with their mothers until September and school started up again.  I didn’t care about any of this, of course, until I grew up and realized how remarkable it was for my parents and others of their generation to come from a place so vastly different from New York City, and be able to not only adjust, but  to thrive.”

That adjustment came as no easy task to Irish immigrants in the 50s. “I thought about what a strange in-between spot that left people like me in. When we go to Ireland we are very much American, but here in the U.S., as an adult with a variety of friends from all different backgrounds, I realize how much being Irish defines me. First-generation children know that ‘home’ means Ireland, but it’s a complicated relationship because chances are that we don’t know Ireland very well at all. 

Keane left Pearl River for New York City to attend Barnard College. After writing for years, it was at Barnard that Keane found her mentor in professor and noted author Mary Gordon. Gordon’s eighth novel, Pearl, explored the streets of Dublin in an emotional narrative centered on the theme of martyrdom. “She became my advisor, and is still advising me now… more than 10 years after graduation. Even now when I get stuck I think of how she’d always steer me back to the most honest kind of writing, and that helps me push through,” Keane shared. 

That honesty is not in short supply in The Walking People. The depth and compassion of the novel, which will be released in paperback in May, has made it a remarkable first work. Readers will certainly be eager for Keane’s future works, which include a novel on Typhoid Mary Mallon that she is currently researching.

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Nster.com