Showing results by author "Orna Ross" in All Categories

Facing the birth of her child, and single motherhood, Jo Devereux has spent the last six months in Mucknamore, the Irish village she fled 20 years ago. A trunk of letters and diaries left by her grandmother and great-aunt has revealed a heartbreaking legacy of bitter secrets that have haunted the women of her family for four generations. Now she must find out the ultimate truth: What other secrets and lies lie under her mother’s and grandmother’s unshakeable silence? How does it connect with her failed life as a gender-bending agony aunt in San Franciso?

When Mercy Mulcahy was 40-years-old, she was accused of killing her elderly and tyrannical father. Now, at the end of her life, she has written a book about what really happened on that fateful night of Christmas Eve, 1989.

After 20 years away, Jo Devereux flies home to Ireland for her mother’s funeral—the mother she hasn’t spoken to for more than two decades. Every minute there reminds her of all the reasons she left, and she has no desire to reacquaint herself with her home village. Or with Rory O’Donovan, her lost love. Then she reads her mother’s will. Her inheritance is a chest full of letters and journals, written by her grandmother and great-aunt, that answer a long-held secret. Who murdered her great-uncle in the Irish Civil War...and why?

Welcome to the imaginative world of Irish poet Orna Ross. If you’re a fan of Maya Angelou, John O’Donoghue, Mary Oliver, or the ancient wisdoms of Rumi or Kabir, you’ll find poems here that are likely to inspire you. Unfailingly attuned to the beauty, complexity, and interconnectedness of life, this small chapbook is a taster of the sort of contemporary inspirational poetry that is spiritual, not religious. These 12 lush and imaginative poems take many forms, from narrative to haiku, with subjects divided into questions, works, histories, moments, gifts, and blessings.