Dream Chaser

The ‘dream chaser’ of this novel, 14-year-old Eleanor O’Rourke, is growing up in the Ireland of the 1920s. Determined to escape what she sees as the limitations of her environment and upbringing, she sets her heart on emigrating to America. It is, however, only after her father’s tragic death that, accompanied by her younger sister Alice, she is able to embark on the long, uncomfortable journey which will eventually take her to an uncle and his unsympathetic wife and daughter in their Manhattan boarding house. Here, the novel’s central theme, the discrepancy between dream and reality, comes into play, as Eleanor struggles to make a livelihood, establish new friendships and loyalties, to deal with disappointments and frustrations – and, all the time, to keep in mind the Co. Cork of her childhood, her family and a young man called Johnny to whom she has given her word that she will one day return. O’Neill’s ability to depict the hopes and apprehensions of young adolescence is once again much in evidence; it all amounts to an engrossing and heart-warming story, in which romance and realism are judiciously blended.