~ Trade Paperback

Briarhill to Brooklyn: An Irish Family's Journey to Freedom and Opportunity

For three years a mysterious potato blight devastated Ireland's Clachans, townlands, and cities while nearly a million people died . . . 

Briarhill to Brooklyn is a novel grounded in facts, in which Jack Bodkin tells the story of his Irish Catholic family's 1848 migration from County Galway, Ireland to Brooklyn, New York, in the era of the Irish Potato Famine. 

"Addresses many subjects relevant to students of Irish history in New York, such as their dangerous crossing on a coffin ship, the role of Irish immigrants in the Civil War, and the transnational networks of support that immigrants created.  A fast paced story that may inspire readers to imagine the resilience, fears, and hopes of their own immigrant ancestors.” -- The Journal of the New York Irish History Roundtable Review