Sing, Wild Bird, Sing

A courageous woman journeys from nineteenth-century Ireland to the American West in a powerful novel about the indomitable will to survive—and to flourish—against nearly impossible odds.

It’s 1849 on the west coast of Ireland. Resilient Honora O’Donoghue is accustomed to fending for herself and to reading the language of the natural world. It was always said she’d been marked for something different, but it’s not until she suffers devastating losses in a country gripped by the Famine that Honora begins to understand how that difference will save her. With the hope of a better life in America calling, Honora keeps moving toward her freedom.

Across the Atlantic, she’s unfamiliar with the customs, jobs are scarce, and she has no money. She finds only one new friend, and Honora’s desperation is a state to be taken advantage of. Even the prospect of marriage is not without its conditions—and far from the dream she imagines. With so much disappointment and heartbreak in her past, Honora must decide what kind of life she wants, and what she’s prepared to do to get it.

Jacqueline O’Mahony was named Young Irish Writer of the Year by the Irish Examiner when she was fourteen. She took her BA in Ireland, her MA at the University of Bologna, and her PhD in history at Boston College and as a Fulbright Scholar at Duke University. She worked at Condé Nast as a stylist and editor for Vogue and at Associated Newspapers as an arts editor, and in 2015 she graduated from City University’s MA in creative writing with a first-class degree. Her debut novel, A River in the Trees, was nominated for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and the Not the Booker Prize in 2020. Originally from Cork, Ireland, she lives in London with her husband and three young children.