Land of Dreams: A Novel (38 page)

Authors: Kate Kerrigan

Ellis Island

KATE KERRIGAN

ISBN: 978-0-06-207153-8

She was living the American dream in the 1920s but her heart was still at home . . .

Ellie and John are childhood sweethearts. Marrying young, against their families’ wishes, the couple barely survive the poverty of rural Ireland. When John is injured in the War of Independence, Ellie emigrates “for one short year” to earn the money for the operation which will allow him to walk again.

Arriving in Jazz Age New York, Ellie is seduced by the energy and promise of America. When the year is up Ellie chooses to stay, returning to Ireland only when her father dies. A trunk full of treasures helps fuel Ellie’s American dream, but as the power of home and blood and old love takes hold she realizes that freedom isn’t the gift of another country, it comes from within.

Praise for Kate Kerrigan

“Kerrigan is a lovely writer and her book breaks from the traditional mould.”

—Sunday Tribune

“Wholesome and satisfying.”

—Heat

City of Hope

KATE KERRIGAN

ISBN: 978-0-06-223728-6

An uplifting, inspiring and heart-warming story of a woman truly ahead of her time. Of loves lost and found, of courage and determination.

It is the 1930s and when her beloved husband, John, suddenly dies, young Ellie Hogan decides to leave Ireland and return to New York. She hopes that the city’s vibrancy will distract her from her grief. But the Depression has rendered the city unrecognizable—gone is the energy and party atmosphere that Ellie once fell in love with, ten years before. And while she is used to rural poverty back home in Ireland, the suffering she sees in New York is an entirely different proposition.

Walking around the neighborhood, Ellie sees destitute families and hungry children on every street corner. The horror of it all jolts Ellie out of her own private depression. Pushing thoughts of her homeland and her dead husband firmly out of her mind, she plunges headfirst into her new life to try and escape her grief. All her passion and energy are poured into running a home and refuge for the homeless. Until, one day, someone she thought she’d never see again steps through her door. It seems that even the Atlantic isn’t big enough to prevent the tragedies of the past from catching up with her . . .

P
RAISE FOR
K
ATE
K
ERRIGAN AND THE
E
LLIS
I
SLAND
T
RILOGY

“Kerrigan is excellent at evoking both rustic Ireland and 20th-century New York.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Kerrigan is a lovely writer and her book breaks from the traditional mould.”

—
Sunday Tribune
(Ireland)

“
Ellis Island
is a feel-good story about love, freedom, belonging and the meaning of home.”

—Stylist

“Brisk and pleasant.”

—
Booklist

“Kate Kerrigan’s
Ellis Island
is a standout novel that vividly brings alive the very different worlds of New York and Ireland in the 1920s. A love story shot through with a perfect sense of the period, it is a rare combination of historical enlightenment and sheer enjoyment. This is a novel to savor as well as devour.”

—Peter Quinn, author of
The Man Who Never Returned

“This story is written with so much heart, its beat is palpable in every word on every page.”

—Cecelia Ahern,
bestselling author of
P.S. I Love You

“A delicious portrayal of the glamour of 1940s Hollywood, and a wonderful conclusion to the Ellis Island trilogy.”

—Hazel Gaynor, bestselling author of
The Girl Who Came Home

C
OPYRIGHT

This book was originally published in 2013 by Pan Macmillan UK.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

LAND OF DREAMS
. Copyright © 2013 by Kate Kerrigan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST
WILLIAM
MORROW
PAPERBACK
EDITION
PUBLISHED
2014.

EPUB Edition OCTOBER 2014 ISBN 9780062340542

ISBN 978-0-06-234052-8

14 15 16 17 18
DIX
/
RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A
BOUT THE
P
UBLISHER

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