My First Wedding

In the spring of 1959, Deborah Troop married the love of her life, Richard Donovan; she being a bouncy, fun-loving Canadian girl, barely out of her teens, and he, a relatively sophisticated and urbane 31-year old Anglo-Irish solicitor. Lending a certain poignancy to the story, was the fact that Richard was a double amputee, having bizarrely lost both legs in separate incidents as a younger man. Deborah, harbouring a romantic notion of rescuing him from his enforced bachelor state, pursued and captivated Richard with her na ve Canadian charm. This highly engaging account, which includes commentary from Deborah's 21st century perspective, will absorb the reader from start to finish. It describes a world still within living memory but seemingly lifetimes ago, a world where protocol was all important and a girl's life was predetermined from birth to lead to one thing only, marriage and childbearing. The endless family letters and telegrams, which have miraculously been kept for over fifty years, chronicle the complete saga of the wedding from the very day of the betrothal right through to the honeymoon itself. Perhaps far more importantly, they carry on well beyond into the years that followed as Deborah's married life unfolds in what was to prove to be an entirely unexpected, and at times tragic, way.