Tea and Green Ribbons: Evelyn's Story - Hardcover

Doyle, Evelyn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743242599 ISBN 13: 9780743242592

Publisher: Free Press, 2003

Synopsis

A daughter of a Dublin painter recounts her beloved late father's struggles to support his six children after their mother's abandonment and describes the custody battle he waged when the state attempted to take the children away from him.

About this title

Review

Poverty breeds injustice. That injustice is all the more terrible, Evelyn Doyle writes in this affecting memoir, when it is visited on children--in this instance, she and her five siblings, who became a cause célèbre in Ireland half a century ago.

The year is 1953. After his wife leaves him for another man, young Evelyn's father puts his six children in church-operated industrial schools while he journeys across the water to England to find work. When he returns a few months later, he finds that the law now considers his children to be permanent wards of the state. The nuns who have taken charge of Evelyn's fate are far from awful, and, we learn, Evelyn's father is less than a saint. Still, family is family, and, in the face of considerable odds, he labors tirelessly for his children's return. As the battle spills from one courtroom to another, the Doyle family earns the sympathies of neighbors and strangers alike, and even a few cheers from the good sisters.

The basis for the independent film Evelyn, Doyle's memoir remains full of tension and uncertainty to the very end, offering both a memorable portrait of hard times and a fine tribute to the power of familial devotion. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author

Evelyn Doyle lived in Ireland, England, and the Outer Hebrides before moving to mainland Scotland, where she served as a psychiatric nurse and a police officer. She lives now outside Edinburgh in Scotland with her partner of fourteen years, Michael.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0743242599
• ISBN 13: 9780743242592
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256