Leara’s Lore #19: Remembering Ireland Series

Reading books as a child started me on a lifetime love affair with stories. My father and I would go to estate sales and look for books. We crawled under tables and pulled books out of drawers to put in a carton sold to us for a dollar or five at the most. My father was interested in history. I read anything I could hold in my hands. I had not yet decided what I liked to read. As I began choosing books and authors, I found I was branching way out of my rural Southern roots to learn from my reading. I realized I was looking for stories that could leave me thinking about the characters long after I finished the book. I wanted to know who they were and why they did what they did. Now that I am writing historical novels, my goal is to create my characters the way I like to read. I continue to have conversations with Mrs. Schultz from “The Darkest Midnight in December,” and Cahey from “Spancil Hill” regularly updates me on where he is on the horse farm in New York.

Within these books, another goal is to show the value of building a community of friends around these characters. In “Spancil Hill,” Cahey brings a community of Scottish, French, and Irish immigrants together to learn and to help each other. Cahey emerged from a love of Ireland that is passed along with each generation.

In “Spancil Hill,” Sharon McGee started out working as a hotel maid but was good with numbers and became trained as an accountant for Cahey’s businesses. Her character had grown so much in “Spancil Hill” that she became the main character in “The Darkest Midnight in December.” I had her travel to Savannah, Georgia at a time in history when Irish businesspeople were relocating to Savannah from New York around 1906.

Though Sharon was an accountant for an Irish shipping company, she lived in a boarding house with a dozen nurses in training. All were women from Irish immigrant families in Savannah whose parents arrived from County Wexford Ireland. A community emerged of women striving to achieve their goals of having a career and being independent. Sharon’s best friend was Gertrude Kelly. Though training to be a nurse, Gertrude had dreams of becoming a professional pianist. Gertrude had dreams at a time in history when women were not given the same opportunities as men in professions like music. Gertrude stepped out of “The Darkest Midnight in December” and became the main character in “Tybee Rhapsody.”

At this point in my storytelling, my publisher suggested that my books should be a named series since they were evolving from the one before. We discussed how to link them visually through the covers and by giving them a name. The series has been named “Remembering Ireland.”

Many reviewers have said that my books need a soundtrack, I tell the stories using a lot of music references. “Tybee Rhapsody” has its own music. Pam Asberry, an Atlanta-based, award-winning pianist and composer, has written a rhapsody for the book. After interviewing Pam as a female pianist and music composer to better understand how Gertrude might process her love of music, Pam suggested that she would like to write a rhapsody for my book. We will be launching both the book and the rhapsody on January 16, 2026.