Star of the Sea

A voyage from Liverpool to New York in the winter of 1847 took 26 days. Among the refugees on board the STAR OF THE SEA were Lord David Meredith and his family, an American newspaperman, an Indian prince, a multitude of unfortunate souls in steerage, and a murderer. The tragedy of the Irish famine and political troubles is well written by O'Connor and sympathetically read by Peter Marinker. In addition to mastering the range of his beautiful voice, Marinker turns his imagination into a breeding place for the cast of players. He capably assigns style and form to each character with authentic regional accents and a sensitive interpretation of the facts and dates that both the author and history have laid before us. J.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

April 14, 2003
First published in the U.K. and shortlisted for Irish Novel of the Year, this brooding new historical fiction by novelist, playwright and critic O'Connor (Cowboys and Indians) chronicles the mayhem aboard Star of the Sea, a leaky old sailing ship crossing from Ireland to New York during the bitter winter of 1847, its steerage crammed to the bulkheads with diseased and starving refugees from the Irish potato famine. The novel takes the form of a personal account written by passenger G. Grantley Dixon, a New York Times
reporter who intersperses his narrative with reportage and interviews as he describes the intrigue that unfolds during the 26-day journey. There's Pius Mulvey, "a sticklike limping man from Connemara" known to the passengers as "the monster" or "the ghost," who shuffles menacingly around the ship and is the subject of many a rumor. There's Earl David Merridith of Kingscourt, one of the few passengers in first class, who has evicted thousands of his tenants for nonpayment of rent, dooming them and their families to almost certain death by starvation. Also aboard is the young widow, Mary Duane, a nanny for the Kingscourt children who shares a history of intimacies with both Kingscourt and Mulvey. And there is, of course, Kingscourt's wife, with whom Dixon is having an ill-advised affair. One of these passengers is on a mission to commit murder, and another is the fated victim. Through flashbacks, the complicated narrative paints a vivid picture of the rigors of life in Ireland in the mid-19th century. The engrossing, well-structured tale will hold historical fiction fans rapt. 4-city author tour.