So Far from Home: The Diary of Mary Driscoll, an Irish Mill Girl- Gillian M.

Summary: Mary Driscoll is a 14 year-old girl living in Ireland in 1847 during the potato famine with her parents. She grew up hearing stories about America and the wonderful opportunities there. Mary finally gets the chance to go to America when her Aunt and older sister (both of whom live in America) sent her a ticket. After almost a month long voyage to America alone, Mary lands in America and soon realizes the hard work she must endure in an overcrowded cotton mill to raise enough money to send her parents over to America so her entire family can be together again.

Review: Mary Driscoll has bittersweet feelings about leaving the only home she has ever known in Skibbereen, Ireland. While she realizes Ireland is not a good place to be because of the famine and the increasing poverty, she does not want to leave her parents in such a bad position. After receiving an invitation and ticket to come to America from her Aunt, Mary’s mother decides it would be best for her to go. Mary gets on a boat for about a month and finally arrives in Boston. Mary’s sister is a housekeeper for a rich family in Lowell, Massachusetts and gets Mary a job as a spinner in a cotton mill nearby. Mary is happy she is somewhat independent and is not just cleaning for a rich family all day. Mary works hard so she can eventually raise enough money for her parents to join her in America.

I would recommend this novel for grades three to five. I was first drawn to this series because it involved history which one of my areas of concentration. This series has diaries for many girls from different time periods, such as the Civil War, Trail of Tears, and the Industrial Period. A downside of this book is that it is told from a girls’ perspective, which may be hard to encourage boys in this age rage to read. Besides this, I found Mary’s diary very informative about the time period and gave good insight into the struggles that immigrants faced when first coming to America. In Mary’s case, many of her co-workers in the factory disliked the Irish because they worked for less money which caused the owner to hire more and worsen the working conditions so he could make a larger profit.

If I were a teacher, I would recommend this book for my history class, or any book in the series depending on what material we were learning. Although it is not a real diary it does contain many facts about the time period in the story, and even pictures from the time period in the back. For example, Lowell, Massachusetts was actually the center of textile manufacturing in 1847. I would also take the time to discuss discrimination with this novel in the class. I could use examples from the text and discuss stereotypes Mary’s coworkers had about her before even getting to know her. Overall, I enjoyed this book, and I found the diary entries made it easy to read.



Citation:

Denenberg, Barry. So Far from Home: the Diary of Mary Driscoll, an Irish Mill Girl. New York: Scholastic, 1997. Print.