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THE
CROOKED BRANCH
BY
JEANINE CUMMINS
REVIEWED BY LINDA WICKLUND
 I
don't often say that I love a book, but this is
one. It's not that I'm that critical - I hope.
But this historical novel touched me because of
the way in which it blended two women's stories
of desperation and loss. As I'm sure I've
mentioned before even a fictional novel can
teach us so much.
In this case, in
1896, Ginny Doyle is suffering through the Great
Hunger often called the potato famine. Then in
present day Majella's story is a first time Mother
struggling to cope with caring for her baby girl,
Emma. She feels as though she is failing her and
might even have mental health problems. When
Majella finds a diary that belonged to her great,
great Grandmother Ginny Doyle, she is even more
worried. Because after reading part of the diary
she tells her therapist "There are all different
kinds of crazy, but mostly I think it's
ancestral."
Ginny's story
begins with the start of Ireland's potato famine.
Overnight a noxious fog blows into the western
shores of Ireland. Ginny and Raymond look out at
their decimated fields. Everywhere they look
there is nothing but rot. Ginny looks back at her
four children but she "could never conceive of the
kind of suffering that would follow."
Majella's story
starts with her first visit to a psychiatrist. She
believes her depression is more than post-partum
depression. She tells the doctor that she thinks
she is going crazy. For clarification she tells
him 'Like actual crazy, not fun-crazy." Majella
tells her story in the first person and sometimes
adds a bit of humor to lighten the story.
Ginny and her
husband Raymond's primary concern is paying the
rent. They decided that their only hope was for
Raymond to go to America to find work and send
money back to his family. They sold enough oats
and their hog to pay the rent. Because, if you
didn't pay the English landlords you would be
thrown out of your cottage and they would burn it
to the ground! From this point the hardships they
endure are hard to fathom. Ginny watches as her
family and neighbors begin to literally starve to
death. Then Ginny hears that an estate nearby
needs a chambermaid. She makes the agonizing
decision to leave her children and go to work at
Spring Hill. So Ginny sets off to see if she can
be hired as the new chambermaid. Leaving her
eldest daughter Maire in charge of her three
younger siblings.
You might think
that Majella's story and unhappiness doesn't
compare to Ginny's agonizing problems. But, to
Majella it's devastating because she wants so
badly to be her old self-assured self and to be
the great Mother she dreamed of. She feels
isolated from her family and friends. She reaches
out to her Mother who hasn't made any attempt to
see Emma and when Majella calls her for support
her Mom says, "Listen I don't have long, I'm about
to run to water aerobics."
There is so, so
much more to this novel that I'm sure you'll find
both heartbreaking and believable in both of these
two women's lives. In spite of the huge time
difference in their experiences both Mothers are
determined to protect their children at any cost.
In closing, I
read quite a lot and I'd say this is the best book
I've read this year!
Happy reading!
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