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We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It: A Memoir of My Irish Boyhood by Tom Phelan

Tom Phelan, who was born and raised in County Laois in the Irish midlands, spent his formative years working with his wise and demanding father as he sought to wrest a livelihood from a farm that was often wet, muddy and back-breaking.

It was a time before rural electrification, the telephone and indoor plumbing; a time when the main modes of travel were bicycle and animal cart; a time when small farmers struggled to survive and turkey eggs were hatched in the kitchen cupboard; a time when the Church exerted enormous control over Ireland.

Week of March 2, 2020

LILAC GIRLS, Martha Hall Kelly's runaway bestseller, introduced the real-life heroine Caroline Ferriday. LOST ROSES, set a generation earlier and also inspired by true events, features Caroline's mother, Eliza, and follows three equally indomitable women from St. Petersburg to Paris under the shadow of World War I. Other paperback releases for the week of March 2nd include Preston & Child's OLD BONES, which brings the true story of the ill-fated Donner Party to new life in a thrilling novel of archaeology, history, murder and suspense; MACHINES LIKE ME by Ian McEwan, a powerful portrayal of two lovers who will be tested beyond their understanding, set in an uncanny alternative 1982 London --- where Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence; and WOMEN TALKING, in which Miriam Toews envisions a small community of women, scarred by trauma but tentatively daring to imagine a new kind of future.