In the mid-nineteenth century, sisters Grace, Eva, and Claire Clinton leave their Belfast home to pursue their dreams in a rapidly changing world. Grace longs for the excitement of London. Eva plans to conquer the theater, and Claire hopes to follow in their physician father's footsteps.
Their personal dreams are centered in a kaleidoscope of social change: the Industrial Revolution, suffrage, and rising nationalism in Ireland. Even the telegraph alters family connections, and Sigmund Freud in Vienna shifts how the world-and the Clintons-views feelings and thoughts. The sisters and their bother, Lawrence, navigate these shifts across four continents and fifty years.
One sister will find herself caught between a loveless marriage and a philandering lover, bearing a child whose crimes will shock New York City. Another will achieve her dreams, while the third will discover a deep religious calling-only to have her faith challenged by love and a world in transition.
Kirkus Review says Celtic Crossings "touches on marriage, faithfulness, performing arts, politics and even serial murder" in the tumultuous and ever-changing political, social, and romantic environment of the nineteenth century. Yet the bonds of these three sisters and a home left behind are never lost.
About the Author: Published author and retired professor John V. Ganly's varied interests include opera, women's rights, and Irish independence.
After studying business and politics, Ganly pursued a successful business career before moving to research. He retired from the New York Public Library as an assistant director and from Rutgers and Columbia universities as an associate professor.
A first-generation Irish American and only child, Ganly grew up on family tales and values that he infused in Celtic Crossings, the first of two novels based on his family's past and his own eclectic interests.
