A review by bgg616
Not the Same Sky by Evelyn Conlon

5.0

This was 4.5 stars for me but I am bumping it up. I expected the story of the forced displacement to Australia of over 4,000 Irish girls aged 14-20 at the time of the Irish Famine in 1848 would be full of horrors. Thankfully the writer doesn't take this path. Instead she weaves a story about loss - loss of family, home, your country and language, and at the bottom of it all, the loss of identity. These stories were mostly forgotten, but thankfully a few histories and an Irish documentary exist.

In this book, which is historical fiction, there is great adherence to the history of these events. The contemporary protagonist is a Dublin woman who carves inscriptions on gravestones. She is invited to Australia to create a monument for these Irish women, and thus their story unfolds. This is a story that will stay with me. It is not only about Irish women, but all the women in the past whose stories have been lost or forgotten.