This fact-based fictional account, composed of three personal journals written as if by Collins' ancestors nearly two hundred years ago, contains their intimate, emotional stories, firsthand experiences, and traditions of old-world craftsmanship.
The legacies of these two Boston Irish and Italian families make it a perfect story for fans of historical Irish fiction by authors like Jean Grainger, Andrew Wareham, and Daisy O'Shea, fans of historical Italian fiction by Daniela Sacerdoti and Kate Quinn, and fans of historical biographical fiction and family sagas by writers Mark Sullivan and Marie Benedict.
Forgotten by Time, Rediscovered by Fate
"A century after her birth, Jessie (Ambrosini) Collins is laid to rest beside her husband, Joseph Cornelius Collins, in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Milford, Massachusetts. Weeks later, while settling her estate, her children and grandchildren discover an old hope chest filled with the artifacts and memories of her life.
Among the curiosities and treasures is a tied bundle containing three handwritten journals, previously unknown to the family. In time, they would come to realize that what they held in their hands was the family legacy—pictures of life passed down by those who lived before—of how it was with them in their time."
The Odyssey of Cornelius Collins
It is 1845 the first year of the Great Famine in Ireland when fourteen-year-old Cornelius Collins begins a harrowing seven-year struggle for survival. At twenty, he escapes to Liverpool, England, securing a one-way third-class passage aboard a "coffin ship" bound for America. Against all odds, he survives the forty-one-day Atlantic crossing on the packet ship Clara Wheeler, landing in Boston, Massachusetts.
There, he is processed and released into the streets alone to face the "land sharks" eager to take what little he possesses, including his life. Fate intervenes, and an Irish American welfare society helps him find work as a bootmaker in the town of Milford. Determined, Cornelius vows to save every penny and send it back to Ireland to support his family.
Of Leather & Stone
As the decades pass, a highly prized pink granite is discovered in Milford triggering a "granite rush" attracting skilled stonecutters from around the world, including Giuseppe Ambrosini, a master stonecutter from Lombardy, Italy, a region renowned for its stone craftsmen. He comes to America seeking his fortune in the pink granite quarries of Milford.
Generations of their two families live through the most radical shift in industrial technology in the history of civilization, the disastrous effects of the American Civil War, widespread labor upheavals, the total collapse of the American economy, and the Irish Rebellion.
These events profoundly affect them and their American-born children, who unite their two families in marriage at the height of the Roaring Twenties and in the aftermath of ‘the war to end all wars.’
The Remembering
There will be no great fortunes or inheritance, no monumental works of art or science left for future generations. Instead, there will be profound life lessons learned from a lifetime of cutting and shaping leather and stone in Milford’s workshops and quarries.
"Theirs is the common fate of common people: living their lives without fanfare, known only to those who worked with them and those who loved them, then forgotten by time—until one day, when they are remembered, and their names are spoken again by the living in THE REMEMBERING."
When his mother is buried, the author discovers a treasure in the attic—his ancestors’ private journals, detailing their origins in the old country, their journeys to America, their lives and families. If we only knew how much our grandchildren would treasure such a thing, we would all do this.
This is a family saga or genealogy—a ‘fact-based fictional account’. The tale is told in first person, as if from the pen of Cornelius Collins. In Part II, son Michael James picks up the pen. Then the other side of the family’s tale is told, stonecutter Giuseppe Ambrosini.
Cornelius’s odyssey begins with An Gorta Mór—the Irish Potato Famine, one of the worst tragedies in human history. Collins’ descriptions of his ancestors’ sufferings and the horrendous ‘coffin ships’ are harrowing.
I was moved by Cornelius’ admission that the famine was so hard on him that his mind had forgotten everything that happened in his life before it.
Though the journey on the ‘coffin ship’ is terrible, immigrants in those days were treated better than they are now. On arrival in Milford, Massachusetts, bootmaking capital of America, Cornelius is immediately given food, shelter and a job as a cordwainer (bootmaker), a sense of pride in himself. He marries, starts a family and becomes a US citizen.
I share the author’s passion for genealogy research. The trouble with genealogies in the bookshop or Amazon, however, is they are of little interest outside your grandchildren and your cousins. Unless someone in your family is a celebrity or a serial killer, your target readership is limited. There needs to be something in your family’s history that makes readers think ‘hey, that relates to me’. ‘These people lived here, did that and had these children’ is not enough of a story.
Collins tells the story within the bigger human history in which his ancestors were players, bringing it home to his protagonists by quoting articles from the Milford Journal and the Framington Star of the time. We also learn in detail the processes of bootmaking and stonecutting.
The Collins and Ambrosini families go through the Civil War, the abolition of slavery, the establishment of the Irish Republic, a visit from PT Barnum’s circus, the Great Depression, the misappropriation of the West from the native Americans, the invention of the telephone, votes for women, the sinking of the Titanic and WWI. Every year at Samhain (now Halloween) they hold a Cuimhneamh—‘the Remembering’—ceremony of ‘how it was with us in our time’.
The ‘poor, tired, huddled masses’ who braved all these hardships and risks to create a better life in the New World, theirs is a big story, one for all of us.
Reviewed by Susie Helm
Susie Helme is an American ex-pat living in London, after sojourns in Tokyo, Paris and Geneva, with a passion for ancient history and politics, and magic, mythology and religion. After a career in mobile communications journalism, she has retired to write historical novels and proofread/edit novels.
