Briarhill to Brooklyn is a work of creative nonfiction, in which I tell the story of my Irish family’s journey from Galway on a coffin ship named Cushlamachree. The family—John and Eleanor Bodkin, and seven of their children—began their journey on St. Patrick’s Day, 1848. Their destination was Brooklyn. The main characters in my book are real people—and the locations, events, and timelines are generally historically accurate. Some of the book is fact, but much of the story is fiction. The tale I tell in Briarhill to Brooklyn relates what I have imagined about my Irish ancestors’ lives between 1848 and 1902. It is fiction sewn together with places, names, and dates I have found in my research. The prologue sets the stage for the immigrants’ story, using the retrospective voice of a first-person narrator. The narrator—one of the young siblings—describes the family crowding around the table in their Briarhill cottage for a meal of potatoes boiled with a turnip and butter from a neighbor’s cow. The young storyteller recalls his mam speaking to his da: “John, for the future of our children, we must go to America.” British parliament’s role in the starvation of the Irish people is clear from the opening pages of Briarhill to Brooklyn, and you will understand the tragic conditions in famine-era Galway City as the narrator relates the startling images he encounters walking down William Street in the ancient city. The early chapters establish the novel’s several storylines, and the first half of the book is consumed by the family’s final few days in Ireland, their voyage across the Atlantic, and the Cushlamachree’s landing in Manhattan. An unimaginable hurdle confronts the family after they arrive in Brooklyn, but the siblings survive and assimilate into New York’s burgeoning and contentious melting pot. America's Civil War presents another curve in the family's path, but they persevere on their journey to freedom and opportunity.