Name: Michele Feeney: Like Family
Start: 2024-09-13T18:30:00-07:00
End: 2024-09-13T20:30:00-07:00
Location: Changing Hands Bookstore

Valley author Michelle Feeney presents her debut historical novel, Like Family, which follows Mollie Crowley, a young unmarried Irish teache
About this Event

Valley author Michelle Feeney presents her debut historical novel, Like Family, which follows Mollie Crowley, a young unmarried Irish teacher, as she takes care of an eight-year-old Polish girl who was orphaned after her family died during the 1918 influenza epidemic.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Mollie Crowley, a 26-year-old Irish unmarried teacher at a one-room schoolhouse in rural Michigan, and 8-year-old Cecilia Pokorski, a Polish girl orphaned after the deaths of her family during the 1918 influenza pandemic, are an unlikely pair.

While Cecilia is grieving the loss of her beloved Mamusia, Mollie leans on her own mother, Catherine, for assistance after taking the girl into their home. Mollie loves teaching, but Cecilia hated having Mollie as her first teacher.

In their town in rural Michigan, the Irish and the Polish don't mix. The Catholic Church, the town's doctor, and Mollie's older brothers are pitted against Mollie, who is highly independent, even stubborn. Everyone who fears "the sickness" is desperate to stay safe and healthy, and unsure of what precautions work.

Cecilia is treated with suspicion, even fear. Mollie, Cecilia, and Catherine, while isolated on their family farm, face all these struggles with courage and creativity.

Readers will see challenges they faced during COVID-19 as similar to the ones people faced nearly a hundred years earlier. Like Family explores themes of prejudice related to ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and religion; foster care and adoption; feminism; education and teaching; language and cultural differences; family factions; death and grief; loneliness; and ultimately, the power of love, family (biological and intentional), and community.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michele Feeney, a lawyer in Phoenix, Arizona, is a native of Michigan. She pursued her passion for creative writing for 20 years before she earned an MFA from Bennington College in 2022. Having raised five children (biological and adopted) and welcomed two grandchildren, she made navigating the COVID-19 pandemic a family affair. While doing so, she remembered a story told to her by her grandmother and was inspired to imagine how families and community members navigated their way through the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918. Like Family is her first novel.