The Graces, set at the turn of a 20th century Ireland, tells the story of a young woman, Rosaleen Moore, who is born with the sight. A seer. She becomes famed, to be known as The Rose, sought after by fashionable society, the mighty of Dublin Castle and political agitators alike, her last extraordinary prophecy ensuring her legend. But a second deathbed revelation resurrects a tragedy, a crime to which the community’s once-beloved, presently imprisoned Abbot has confessed. But now doubt is cast on his word. For, the Rose has a different tale to tell.
Although mainly set in Dublin, the story begins in Rosaleen’s birthplace in Co. Clare where her ability to foresee events and read people, quickly leads to trouble in the tightly-knit community and embroils her in a scandal. However, while Rosaleen’s gift is seen by many in the village to be a curse, they once held Rosaleen’s grandmother in awe for the very same gift: she who was said to have been ‘touched by the Graces.’
An early display of Rosaleen’s grandmother’s gift is taken from a true story: my own maternal great-grandmother, Maggie, was said to have had the sight. Maggie lived with her husband and eleven children in a Tipperary farm cottage and, passed down through the generations, is the tale of how she woke screaming in the night, fearing for her seventeen-year-old son, Tommy. The year was around 1911, the era in which the novel is set. She went running to Tommy’s bed and held him, begging him to be careful, for she had the most terrible terror that something dreadful was going to befall him.
Tommy, being young, laughed it off and went about his business with his brothers, travelling with the family’s thresher to neighbouring farms to carry out the last of the summer threshing. It was not long after my great-grandmother’s sleepless night that it happened. No one knows exactly how, but could only guess that Tommy had somehow tripped before the thrashing machine’s monstrous blades and become entangled in them. The men roared, the engine screeching to a halt as the men lifted Tommy’s limp and maimed body and laid him down on the field but nothing could be done. It was said that my great-grandmother fled to the fields and wailed into the night and could not be coaxed back in. This tale I tell faithfully in the book but give the name of Joey to my great-uncle.
Truths witnessed, or handed down to me from the era run throughout the book. The scandal in Clare sees Rosaleen flee to her Aunt Ellen’s Dublin boarding house in Eccles Street. Aunt Ellen and her husband Noel are very much based on my own great-aunt and great-uncle, Dublin natives who would have been a courting couple at the time the book is set. As would my paternal grandmother and grandfather and some of their old Dublin ways and stories are included in the story. Bridge-playing seems to have been a favoured Dublin pastime and the rare perfect hand that the fictional Aunt Ellen preserves proudly in the sideboard was in fact exactly what my grandmother, Eileen, did with her own perfect hand! At the unveiling of the Charles Stewart Parnell monument on October 1st 1911, Aunt Ellen, watching, refers to his looks, saying, ‘Those eyes, ducky!’ This was actually taken from a single-line telegram my grandmother sent to my grandfather, extolling his eyes, on their marriage in 1918! Some of the boarders in the Eccles Street house are based on real Dublin characters of the time, most notably ‘Harry’ (name changed) the coachmaker who was rumoured once to be a dentist before he broke a man’s jaw!
The Eccles Street setting was born of a period in which I spent much time there. I lived in Dublin in my early adulthood but had cause to return to the city for a long duration when my elderly father was a patient in the Mater hospital. For months, I would walk up O’Connell Street (which became its previous British name of Sackville Street in my mind) crossing Dorset Street to the hospital on Eccles Street. The full name of the hospital is the Latin, Mater Misericordiae which is taken to mean Mother of the Wretched Heart or Merciful Mother. While my father was a patient there – just as Lorcan, one of my characters in the book does – I renamed it the Pater Misericordiae: Father of the Wretched Heart, meaning, in this case, Miserable Father!
The backstreets off the main thoroughfare of O’Connell Street, and the Eccles Street houses became as familiar to me as any I had lived in. The houses reminded me of those featured in the film of James Joyce’s The Dead, the story’s aunts, their piano playing and carry-on at the party so often reminding me of my own great-aunts and the gatherings they would host. Visiting the houses which are now consultants’ offices, but retain their old and original features, I began to imagine my story unfolding within them. As indeed it does. Not only in Aunt Ellen’s boarding house but in those of the surrounding neighbours and that of the Mesmerists: the spiritualists who will come to so revere Rosaleen and her gifts.
But where ultimately she will meet her nemesis.
(c) Siobhan MacGowan
About The Graces:
Science and faith collide against tumultuous 20th-century Ireland in this heart-wrenching historical novel, perfect for fans of Stacey Halls and Laura Purcell.
Bestowed with the graces.
Condemned by a secret.
Redeemed by a lie.
Dublin, 1918. Rosaleen Moore: The Rose. A seer and a healer.
Revered by popular spiritualists and sought after for her gifts of prophecy and healing by fashionable society, the mighty of Dublin Castle and mercurial political agitators alike, her last extraordinary prophecy will only see her legend grow.
On the anniversary of her death, pilgrims walk the Way of the Rose: to St. Kilian’s Abbey and its bell tower which so lured the Rose in life. Although a shrine, the bell tower has seen tragedy – a heinous crime to which the monastery’s once-beloved Abbot, now imprisoned, has confessed.
Then emerges a deathbed revelation by Rosaleen Moore which casts doubt on the Abbot’s word.
The Rose has a different tale to tell . . .
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