Signed, A Paddy

What was he thinking and seeing? Was he picturing his dead mother? Or smelling the burning peat of home before the stench of rotten potatoes and disease gagged his memory? Could he taste hand-rolled sausage and fresh eggs? Or only moldy bread and salted cabbage stew? Was everyone who would survive these horrors like me? Were they trying desperately to hold on to the past, the good memories, or were they trying to escape any whisper of a good life they once had, because it was just too painful?

Ireland, 1848. Fourteen-year-old Rosaleen watches her mother die. Her country is reeling from the great potato famine, which will ultimately kill more than one million people. Driven by a promise and her will to survive, Rosaleen flees her small coastal town.

She eventually arrives in America at the birth of the industrial revolution and is filled with hope and a new sense of independence. Yet the more Rosaleen becomes a part of this new world, the more she longs for a community she lost and a young man she can't forget.

Through a series of both heartwarming and tragic events, Rosaleen learns that she can't outrun the problems that come along with being Irish. And maybe, she doesn't want to.