The Naming of Eliza Quinn

In the late 1960s, in the hollow of an ancient oak tree beyond a derelict cottage in Cork, were found the bones of a three-year-old girl. It was thought that they dated back to the time of the great potato famine of the mid 1800s. The bones were discovered by an American woman, who had inherited the cottage which had lain empty and broken for 40 years. Local searches reveal that the house had originally belonged to The Quinns. Eliza Quinn was their baby. This is a story that speaks of generations and of landscapes—abandoned villages, famine graves, old potato ridges sinking back into the earth, traces of a population that fell by two and a half million in less than 10 years. But above all, it is the story of the Quinn family. And it is Carol Birch's tour de force.