Book Review: Sing Wild Bird, Sing, by Jacqueline O’Mahoney

SING WILD BIRD, SING
By Jacqueline O’Mahony
Lake Union Publishing, 2023

Many books, both historical and fictional, have been written about the Irish potato famine of the 1800s. “Sing Wild Bird, Sing,” by Jacqueline O’Mahony, is initially set on the West Coast of Ireland, but its reach into the Western United States depicts the lengths to which young Irish women of that era often went to seek freedom. What does it mean to own or be owned? To possess your own thoughts and desires?

Honora O’Neill was marked from the hour of her birth when a robin flew through the cottage, a piseog, a curse. Her mother died soon after the birth, and village women would not nurse Honora due to the piseog. She always believed that she grew up stronger than others, having been raised on goat milk. Because she was believed to be cursed, she was allowed a freedom in her early years that would later be restrained by her husband and circumstances.

The precipitating circumstances that propel Honora to America is based on a true event. In 1849 villagers from Doolagh, on the verge of starvation, walked miles in mountainous terrain and winter weather to seek food from the Lord. Once they arrived, they were sent to a further lodge. When they arrived there, they were told they were too late. On the walk back to the village, Honora went into premature labor, an event that changed everything.

This book engages the reader with a twist of fate or plot on almost every page right up to the end. You must stop yourself from turning ahead to the last chapter. Therefore, this reviewer will reveal no more than this: “Sing Wild Bird, Sing” ends on the prairies of Oregon.

From the first page, the reader will develop such regard for Honora that you hope and deeply care that her life ends better than her life began. Toward the end, Honora thinks, “It was not difficult to go on pretending … The hard part began to be holding on to who she was at all.” (p. 233)

Please read “Sing Wild Bird, Sing” to find out who Honora became.

— Mary Barbera