The Indenture of Ivy O'Neill --by Diane Helentjaris

 Fiction / History / Ireland / US Colonies 

AIA Publishing; 1^st edition

June 3, 2022

ASIN: B09XWQ2QT2

1848 KB

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1922329312

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1922329318 

300 pages

$22.50 (Hardback, Paperback is also available, as well as electronic)

5 Stars

 

Full disclosure here, I know Diane Helentjaris, and read an early version of this novel. When the book came out, I reread it, and enjoyed it more. I’m a bit of a history buff and was thoroughly entranced by this story. An adult book, I would not hesitate to let any of my children read the book. 

 

Ivy O’Neill is an Irish lass, who with her older brother, Sean, steal off to sell their mother’s weavings on board a ship for more money than they could get in their village. They are kidnapped, and find themselves in Baltimore, Colonial America in 1670 where they are sold for four years indenturement to two different men. 

 

A red-headed Irish lass who hates the British with good cause, Ivy finds herself in quite a pickle—kidnapped by the British, sold to a British American, she must work for him at whatever chores he sets for four years. Fortunately, he’s of a different stripe that the others, and he wants Ivy to help raise his motherless children. Ivy only wants to run away and get home to Ireland, her family, and her neighbor Kevin, to whom she is almost engaged.

 

Helentjaris is masterful at weaving stories. She not only gives us diverse and believable characters, she gives them bones and muscle, brains and speech, she clothes them in detail and personalities. Had I read more books like hers when considerably younger, I may have become a serious, educated historian. Ivy O’Neill is a thoroughly believable protagonist who comes of age in a new and strange life in a new and strange land. How strange? Well, at that time there were no skunks in Ireland.