The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog: The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit
Monaghan begins with a confession of sorts. Raised in Alaska, she always had thought of herself as Irish yet for a long time knew next to nothing about Ireland. In her mind's eye, her ancestral home was part myth, part history--unreal and intangible. Here she tells the story of going home for the first time, as it were. Her Ireland isn't one place but a mosaic of places, and as she travels the byways of old Ireland, which aren't far removed from contemporary Ireland, tracing the pagan calendar of the Celtic year, she also explores Ireland's fierce love of poetry (she reminds us that books of poetry often appear on Irish best-seller lists). She makes a poet's circuit as well as an Irish American's journey into the spiritual and ancestral past--and present--and from Connacht and Ulster to Leinster and Munster, she proves a perfect guide, introducing long-departed ancestors and a land in which the human, the natural, and the divine come together. A dreamy, utterly enchanting walking meditation on Ireland's pagan heart.June SawyersCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved