We are in 1985, in a small Irish town where life is harsh and unforgiving. Bill Furlong is a coal merchant who is doing quite well for himself. Coal sells easily, and he has a loving wife and five gifted daughters. Yet Bill often reflects on his good fortune and how quickly it could all disappear. One day, while delivering coal to the local convent, he discovers a desperate young girl trying to escape. From that moment on, Bill\u2019s life begins to change. This story is inspired by the true history of the women, girls, and babies who suffered abuse in the church-run Magdalen laundries, hidden away from society because they were considered to have \u201cfallen.\u201d The novel is both beautiful and deeply thought-provoking, raising questions about how we can live comfortably while others suffer, and what we are willing to sacrifice in order to help them. I was also struck by learning about this dark chapter of Irish history, which I had never known about before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He stood back then and faced her. ‘Surely they’ve only as much power as we give them, Mrs Kehoe?’<\/em> We are in 1985, in a small Irish town where life is harsh and unforgiving. Bill Furlong is a coal merchant who is doing quite well for himself. Coal sells easily, and he has a loving wife and five gifted daughters. Yet Bill often reflects on his good fortune and how quickly it could all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21729,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[291,293],"tags":[111,42,257],"class_list":["post-21728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-2026","category-challenge-riquiqui-2026","tag-abuse","tag-childhood","tag-poverty"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/jean-carlo-emer-6sDmwO4__D8-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21730,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21728\/revisions\/21730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
‘I wouldn’t be too sure? She paused then and looked at him the way hugely practical women sometimes looked at men, as though they weren’t men at all but foolish boys. More than once, maybe more than several times, Eileen had done the same.<\/em>
‘Don’t mind me,’ she said, ‘but you’ve worked hard, the same as myself, to get to where you are now. You’ve reared a fine family of girls – and you know there’s nothing only a wall separating that place from St Margaret’s?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"