Synopsis: 1920s rural Ireland - a country of unrest, poverty and few opportunities for girls beyond marriage. When Ellie's father drowns and she and her sister are sent to New York to join their uncle she thinks her chance of a career has arrived, but she soon finds that she is even more restricted. She takes matters into her own hands and begins to chase her dream.

Review: Joan O'Neill's has built a reputation for her earlier books about growing up in Ireland, and the series which began with Daisy Chain War (also reviewed on Write Away!) examined the lives of teenagers within a Dublin family from the 1940s to the present. In her latest novel she begins a new series, loosely based on the experiences of members of her family who emigrated to America in the 1920s - she tells us a little about this in her interview for Write Away!

Eleanor O'Rourke, at fourteen, is keen to continue her education, but also inspired by her aunt, who had left Ireland and trained as a milliner in New York, but returned to open her own exclusive hat shop. Having left school, however, Ellie's father insists that her future needs to be limited to helping her mother at home. After his death, the family's income will not support them all, and she welcomes the opportunity for education her emigration to live with her uncle appears to offer. However very soon it becomes apparent that, while her younger sister is accepted into the family, she is considered no more than cheap labour. Running away, she seeks help from friends she made on her voyage, and eventually develops not only her talent for hat design, but also a growing confidence.

O'Neill creates appealing teenage heroines, and readers are led effortlessly into Ellie's ambitions, her triumphs, fears and sorrows. Lonely and homesick, Ellie is drawn to Zak, the handsome, sympathetic and ambitious son of a successful Jewish family, but she discovers that marriage to him would bind her just as frustratingly to domesticity as her life in Ireland, and she rejects him, reluctant to abandon her dream of independence and a developing career. Similarly, returning home on a visit, she refuses her childhood sweetheart, realizing that she will not be content until she achieves her ambition. As she did with her earlier books, O'Neill deftly creates the life of an earlier twentieth century, revealing that, despite the difference in country, time and culture, the issues of independence and identity which trouble her heroines remain the concerns at the heart of twenty-first century teenage girls' experience. An excellent socio-historical novel for Key Stage 3 and older readers, with opportunities for deeper study at many levels.