Mercy First and Last

Their doomed love affair became fodder for poets and no less an author than Washington Irving, who put a popular romantic spin on the relationship between Sarah Curran and Robert Emmet.

Bold Robert Emmet, the hero of Ireland, features more prominently in history because he is a man and it's usually the men we read about. The really interesting story is that of Sarah Curran, and Katie Hanrahan has applied a masterful touch to this telling.

Sarah is shown as the offspring of a tyrant whose public persona is revered to this day. Using historical documents, the author paints an engrossing picture of a Regency-era woman trying to make the best match possible when her social circle consists of radically liberal thinkers. Her attraction to show more Robert Emmet grows as much from sentiment as from rebellion as she refuses to abandon the young man when political expediency drives her father to forbid contact with the Emmet family.

Those who know Irish history will find an intriguing view of Emmet's failed rebellion and subsequent refusal to leave Ireland without his beloved Sarah. With the novel told through her eyes, the reader is immersed in her desperate effort to send Emmet on his way before he can be captured and executed. Even more intriguing is the historically accurate depiction of her life after her father essentially throws her under the bus, as they say, when the authorities get too close to his own involvement in the rebellion.

With the romance stripped away, the story follows Sarah's steps to a normal, and socially acceptable, life as a wife and mother. It is a delight to read about a real person, rather than the wilting flower that has come down the ages. With no resources Sarah becomes highly resourceful, putting her life back together before fate once again strikes with cold cruelty.

MERCY FIRST AND LAST is a page-turner that is impossible to put down, a must for fans of historical fiction that provides a new perspective on a well-known event. show less

While the focus of this book is obviously the relationship between Sarah and Robert, it covers much more of Sarah's life. We see how events during her childhood affected her and how her later life turned out. I found it mostly interesting. I say 'mostly' because Sarah as the narrator didn't always work for me. She'd tell what her father was doing while he was away or how the plans were progressing for a revolution. These events may have been necessary for the overall plot, but just being told about them by someone who only knew second hand what had happened made the reading a bit slow at times.

I also found Sarah to be unreliable in the narration of her earlier life. For example, if she accepted the invitation to visit Mrs. McNally only show more to be polite, why did she get angry when her father said she couldn't go? I also found it confusing why Sarah was concerned about going behind her father's back the second time Robert tried to initiate a secret correspondence but not the first.

I enjoyed the second half of the book better than the first, as Sarah tried to pick up the pieces of her life and see what she could make of it. The ending was touching, and, I felt, true to the rest of the story.

I was thankful the author included an epilogue to say what happened to the characters afterward, but I wish there'd been a section mentioning what creative liberties had been taken with the story.

Those interested in Irish history may want to check this out. I would recommend it to readers who like true stories about people overcoming life's hardships.

*Note* I received a copy of this book from Library Thing Early Reviewers for my honest opinion. show less

Sarah Curran, is the central character. Her father looms large in the book as well. I truly enjoyed this book. It gave you a sense of how constricting the lives of women of her period lived. The smallest infraction of "societies rules" could ruin you. Her struggles were the same that many women had at that period. One of the small interesting points brought brought out in the book was that the working class women in some ways were far more liberated than the middle and upper class women. Think about that ladies! The only thing negative I have to say about the physical book is - if I were in a book store, the cover of the book would not appear to me to even pick it up. Not sure what needs to be changed - but had I not received this book show more through the Library Thing give away - I would, sadly, never have read it. That would have been my loss, show less

I don't read a lot of historical fiction but I made an exception for this one because of my love of Ireland. My great-great grandmother (who I was named after) emigrated from Ireland around 1845 during the potato famine. I recently visited Ireland and some of the places that my family came from.

This novel is the story of Sarah Curran and her love for Robert Emmet, a revolutionary leader in the late 1700s. Sarah lived in a dysfunctional family - her mother ran off, her father was a bully who brought his pregnant mistress into the family and he was absent from his children's lives. He disinherited Sarah and kicked her out of the family house when he found out about her love for Robert. Their love is disrupted by the uprising when Emmet show more was arrested and the rest of the novel is about Sarah's life.

This is a great book if you enjoy Irish history and want to learn more about some of the people involved in the earliest uprisings to give freedom and rights to the Catholics in Ireland.

Thanks to LibraryThing for a copy of this book for a fair and honest review. show less

Mercy First and Last, by Katie Hanrahan, is a work of historical fiction. The story is set Ireland in the turbulent times of late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The story is told in the voice of protagonist Sarah Curran who is the young daughter of a tyrannical father. Tragedy strikes her family when she is young , Her only hope of escaping her prison like life is to marry. Sarah falls in love with a young man who is a revolutionary. From that point on, her life takes a path she could never have foreseen.

I found this book to be both well written and interesting.

I received this book through Library Thing Early Reviewers and the opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Although this book is well written (often I am dismayed when a book is difficult to understand due to poor grammar, sentence structure, composition, etc.) I am sorry to say that I really did not enjoy it at all. Understanding that the backdrop of the struggle for Irish independence (in the early 1800s) is key to the book, I still found that all of the time spent on the background politics took away from the story of the main characters. I struggled mightily to try and enjoy what I was reading but I just couldn't. I was unable to connect with the story of Sarah and Robert. Maybe I will go back to it and try and reread it at a later date.

Sarah, the daughter of a prominent Irish politician, finds herself in love with Robert, an Irish revolutionary. Hiding the relationship from her family, she writes Robert letters and meets him in secret. When Robert is captured, Sarah is disowned by her father and forced to consider marrying another.

I’m not quite sure how to review this book. To be blunt, I thought Sarah was pretty boring. The story itself seemed to lack something. Nothing really happened until the book was almost finished and the plot moved at a crawl. Overall, not a book I would reread or recommend.