Irish Passage: Water Street by Patricia Reilly Giff

In Water Street Patricia Reilly Giff continues her semi-autobiographical story of her Irish family, begun in Nory Ryan's Song and continued in Maggie's Door. Nory Ryan is now grown, a lay nurse-midwife in Brooklyn, married to childhood friend Sean Mallon and mother to three nearly grown children. Her youngest, Bridget, known as "Bird," has always hoped to follow her mother's vocation as a healer, but helping her treat a horrible head wound has convinced Bridget that she lacks the inner strength to do such work.

It is 1875, and as Bird begins eighth grade, the last year of public education available to people of her means, she meets Thomas Neary, who moves into her apartment building just as classes begin. Both Bird and Thomas have family problems as well as their own futures to worry about. Thomas' father spends most of his time drinking in the pubs, and Thomas grieves for the mother he's never known. Bird worries about her plain, unmarried sister who faces a life of debilitating work in a factory and her older brother who has turned to the illegal practice of bare-knuckle prizefighting to bring home needed money.

Still, Bird and Thomas have great hopes for their own futures. "Nothing is impossible" Nory and Sean have taught their children, and the tall towers of the Brooklyn Bridge being constructed just outside their windows, one on their side and one on the Manhattan side, represent their hopes to move beyond their hardscrabble neighborhood as they grow. Both are dedicated and gifted students, and their work pays off at graduation, where Thomas earns a scholarship to a fine arts high school and Bird learns that her parents plan to sacrifice their savings for a farm to send her to train as a nurse.

While not as dramatic as the books which precede it, this novel is an honest and moving portrayal of the lives of immigrants in New York in the late nineteenth century. Giff has the ability to put the reader right inside the mind and heart of her characters and let them live their lives as the story works itself out. Water Street is a satisfying extension of Nora Ryan's story and its part in the history of the Irish Diaspora.