The Famine Orphans - Patricia Falvey

A vividly told, triumphant story that follows one of the thousands of young Irish women shipped to Australia after the Famine as part of the Earl Grey Scheme, whose indomitable bravery in an exotic, danger-laden land helped shape a new country. For readers of Ellen Marie Wiseman, Sarah Loudin Thomas, Amanda Skenandore and Marie Benedict. They survived Ireland’s Great Hunger to build a new society in untamed Australia . . .1848: The girls, 4,000 in all, come from every part of Ireland—from the shores of Galway to the Glens of Ulster and Belfast’s teeming streets—to board ships bound for Australia. All were chosen from Ireland’s crowded workhouses. Most are orphans. The Earl Grey Scheme was presented as an opportunity for young women to gain employment as domestic servants in the Colony. But there is another, unstated purpose—the girls are to “civilize” the many men sent there as convicts, so that settlements can be built.Kate Gilvarry has spent six months in a Newry workhouse, subsisting on a diet of watery porridge. She knows there’s no future for her either within its walls or outside, in a ravaged, starving land. But once Kate’s ship completes the harrowing voyage, she and her companions find their reception in Sydney dismayingly unwelcoming, as anti-Irish sentiment grows. Homesick, and disillusioned by love following a shipboard crush, Kate strives to fit in, first as the servant of a demanding English woman, then as a farmer’s b
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