Title: Mary Quigley’s Da: A Personal Tragedy of an Irish Immigrant Caught on the
Kansas-Missouri Border during the Civil War
Author: Mary Jaffe
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 978-1532092206
Pages: 464
Genre: Historical Fiction
Synopsis
In 1849, half brothers Michael and Joseph Quigley arrive in America seeking relief from the Irish potato famine. Their dying father tasked Michael to watch over Joe, but young Joe is headstrong and soon runs away. He spends his teen years in the wild cow town of West Bottoms, where his entrepreneurial savvy propels him into a successful business until a worldwide depression sends him scrambling. Joe meets and marries another Irish Catholic, Mary McManus, who comes from a family of higher ilk. The unlikely couple settles in a frontier riddled with lawless violence, which leaves them burned out by Jayhawkers. Natural catastrophes, failed crops, Joe’s military service, and illnesses overburden them, but it is a shocking, single event that leads to the destruction of Joe’s family. Through the eyes of nine-year old Little Mary Quigley—Joe and Mary’s second-born daughter—we observe the ultimate, horrific moment that leaves her and her five siblings orphaned. This particular act becomes their dark family secret and leaves a lamentable legacy that has waited generations to be revealed.
About the Author
Mary Jaffe (née Scott) dreamed of becoming a National Geographic journalist, but it was a dream unrealized. Now, at age seventy-five—after thirty-five years of teaching music, professional opera singing, raising a family, and caring for her terminally ill husband—she has turned to writing historical fiction. She believes that history is best understood as a story from the point of view of the characters who made or lived it.
