This book was a real disappointment. I generally love historical fiction, Irish stories, and immigration stories, so this novel about a young Irish girl who emigrates to Canada in the 1830s and falls in love with a runaway slave sounded right up my alley. Unfortunately, I felt overwhelmed by its preachy-teachy approach to slavery. Now, don't get me wrong: I've read some fine novels about the evils of slavery, The Color Purple, and Beloved, among them. And I certainly think that slavery and racism are marks of the worst that is in us. But here, the author, who is Canadian, seems to want to hit us over the head with facts that we already know. This made me wonder if perhaps Canadians were less informed about the situation of slaves than Americans, but one of my Canadian LT friends confirmed that the history of slavery is indeed taught in schools. What could have been a good story about young Oonagh falling in love with Chauncey Taylor, a barber and runaway slave, gets bogged down in didacticism. Here's an example of their conversation, which rings like a catechism:

"I was born on a wagon on the move."
"A wagon! Oh, surely not on the move! They would have stopped for her sake, surely."
"Maybe . . . maybe not." He smiled at my indignation.
"Where was your poor mam travelling to?"
"She was being moved from a plantation down in North Carolina to the place in Virginia where they claim I was born. Place in the Carolinas been sold, so slaves was sold away. Lucky sold to Virginia instead of farther south."
"So close to her time?"
"All that bumping of the cart. See, she was lucky to get a wagon ride. Mostly the others walked. That was what the owners thought of my mama, they liked her that well. Let her have the wagon ride."
. . . "They made her work in the field three weeks after her confinement?"
"Three weeks after I was born. She made a little basket and hung me up in a tree so's the snakes wouldn't get me while she was hoeing."
"Did you cry for her?"
"I expect I did, sure. But slave babies learn early ain't much use to cry."

And another similar conversation:

"Ma'am, I was king of the egg theives when I wasn't more'n five years old . . . This was in Virginia. See, they's always some hens fly out of the coop, and I was supposed to follow, see where they laid their eggs. Collect them up for the kitchen. I followed alright, but I didn't collect all the eggs, just most of 'em. Then after dark I'd sneak out and collect the three or four I'd left for us . . . "
"You had to steal eggs? Didn't they keep enough eggs to provide for everyone?"
"Well, they sold a lot of eggs to town, as a matter of fact. But corn was what they provided for us, a measure of corn on Sunday to last all week.
"Corn? Cornmeal?"
"Dry corn on the ear, Miss Oonagh. Folks would have to grind it with a handmill after the workday for their supper and for next day's breakfast."
"What else did you eat with that?"
"Corn. That's it. Sometimes they'd throw in a bit of pork fat."
"What about vegetables? Didn't you have gardens?
"Gardens. Oh yes. Some of the older slaves, including my mama, work the vegetable patch. But none of that's for us."
"None of it?" I had a lump in my throat. "Couldn't you just take what you needed?"
He sighed deeply. "Naw, they always found out. They have someone watching that patchl like a hawk. And someone always has to pay. It's the old folks, too worn out for fieldwork, who work the vegetables. So it's them gets the floggings. No, it's an awful risk to steal even a carrot or a pea pod. You never know who's watching you or who would tell on you just for a bit of favour themselves, you know."

Oonagh sounds so naive that I wondered if this might be a YA book (the main character is 18), but the detailed sex and violence scenes probably rule that out. At one point, Oonagh worries that her family will be upset to learn of her engagement, not because Chauncey is a black runaway slave who might be grabbed any day by American bounty hunters, but because he isn't Catholic. Could she have really been that clueless?

In a note at the book's end, Tilberg reveals that the story is based on a brief reference in Susannah Moodie's Roughing it in the Bush, when a neighbor mentions a local barber, a runaway slave, who had the "presumption" to marry a young Irish girl and was dragged out of bed and killed by a mob on his wedding night. Tilberg couldn't find any facts about the pair in her research, so she decided to turn it into fiction. She really missed an opportunity to write a great story, even one that better conveys a message about the evils of slavery and racism. It might have been even more interesting NOT to include the wedding night death scene. She could have followed what happens to Oonagh and Chauncey and their future children and made more subtle points about prejudice and violence. As it was, she ended by tacking on a short chapter set 18 years later, in which Oonagh and her niece attend an abolitionist meeting in Toronto (Frederick Douglass is the speaker), and Oonagh speaks out against the clergy for not taking a stronger stand. That's followed by Oonagh's two-page summary of the anti-slavery laws enacted in the US and Canada. And more didacticism:

"And although it it grieves me deeply to acknowledge the race hatred that still exists among certain elements of Canadian society, the hatred that killed my own Chauncey, it is also abundantly clear that with our firm anti-slavery laws Canada stands as a beacon of hope to those so terribly oppressed south of our borders . . . "

"We cannot rest content in Canada knowing that we have enacted anti-slavery legislation yet not admit there are those in out own country who would treat persons of African origin as lesser citizens . . . Such racism diminishes us all."

Another problem is that the plot is rather bipolar, half conventional immigration narrative and half anti-slavery diatribe. Tilberg tries to depict Oonagh as a bit of a rebel in Ireland (probably to prepare us for her romance with a runaway slave): she doesn't believe in God, so some people call her a witch, and she spends a lot of time leaning against a curious ancient stone. But it never quite works, either to convince us that Oonagh is a rebel or to tie the two parts of the novel together. Although she says she never wants to marry, Oonagh spends a lot of time mooning over a past love, a young man who has gone to sea and who returns from time to time to renew the gossip about the two of them and to bring letters from her brother Michael, who emigrated to Canada. So much for the unconventional.

I simply never engaged with the overly naive Oonagh or the too-perfect-to-be-true Chauncey, probably because of Tilberg's heavy-handed and awkwardly managed didacticism.

I'm giving Oonagh two stars for the concept, even though poorly executed, and for some fine descriptions of the Canadian forest and newly settled town. ( )

I hadn't read anything by Mary Tilberg before, but I picked up Oonagh because it was on the Ontario Library Association's 2010 Evergreen list. I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book.

Set in the 1830's, the story is about an 18-year-old Irish immigrant, Oonagh Corcorant, who settles in Upper Canada and falls in love with fugitive slave Chauncey Taylor. The novel explores poverty, racism and class struggles. It is rich in historical detail, but most of all, it's a darn good story. Tilberg is a terrific storyteller, and I had a tough time putting the book down as I was reading it. ( )

Oonagh by Mary Tilberg is an amazing story that captivated me right from the start. The first chapter is about sorrow and suffering. While the reader is still adjusting to the picture that has been painted for them, we are swept forward in time, only to flash back to the start of the true tale of this story, the tale that Oonagh Corcoran, the main character of the story, is telling. Oonagh Corcoran is an Irish lass from Southern Ireland who emigrates in the 1830s to Upper Canada with her sister to join their brother in the New World, leaving their Da and siblings behind. The story tells the tale of Oonagh’s life in Ireland before emigrating, the political turmoil of Ireland at the time, the Atlantic voyage taken to the New World, Oonagh’s adaptation to her new life and the people she encounters.

This all sets the stage for when Oonagh meets, and over time befriends Chauncey Taylor, the local barber in the New World. Chauncey has a story of his own that Oonagh brings to the reader’s attention in stages. The story of a former Virginia slave that has made Canada his refuge from the past. While we learn Chauncey's story and their relationship, the reader gains awareness of the social and racial boundaries of that time.

Throughout the story Tilberg does an excellent job crafting her characters, building the story foundation and driving the story forward with a momentum that briefly ebbs in places to bring the reader to the crest of the emotional wave before resuming momentum to the next wave. In all, a beautiful story I would highly recommend. ( )