The Story of Chicago May

Memoirist O'Faolain gave herself the dubious task of filling in the biographical blanks in the public accounts of fellow Irish immigrant "Chicago" May Duignan, a thief and prostitute of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born into rural poverty, May stole her family's savings to cross the Atlantic and embark on a nefarious career based on her physical attractiveness and ruthlessness. Clearly identifying with her subject, the author fattens the thin skein of known facts with speculations on the antiheroine's motivations and milieu. The music of the Emerald Isle can be heard in Terry Donnelly's voice. She sweetens the tale and contributes her own natural charm, in particular vivifying quotes from May's autobiography with unremorseful sass. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

July 18, 2005
In 1890, 19-year-old May Duignan left her hardscrabble Irish town with her family's savings and set off to create a new life. In a biography that is also a reflection on autobiography, O'Faolain, author of two bestselling memoirs, examines the young woman's transformation into the notorious thief and prostitute Chicago May. Her greatest source is May's own account of her life, which, in significant contrast to modern memoir, is long on action and short on reflection. O'Faolain balances that deficit with smart readings of scattered sources and with evocations of her own life that illuminate the Irish experience in May's time and today. She follows May through the desperate and tough Chicago red light district to the Tenderloin of New York, and then to London, Paris and various prisons. May's opportunities for escape from the life she made came in many forms, including marriage to the black sheep of a respectable New Jersey family and a successful escape with the loot from a heist of the American Express office in Paris. But shortsightedness, loyalty and revenge led her to rebuff each opportunity. While drawing out the lacunae of her story with speculation and description, O'Faolain resists the urge to reinvent or sentimentalize May. The biographer makes herself a complement rather than an intrusion, and May emerges lively, unique and cut from the cloth of Irish and American reinvention. B&w photos not seen by PW
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