What was this book called set during Irish famine....

[TerriPie]

Evening everyone 😀

Back in the early 90's I read an amazing (and equally horrifying) fiction book set during the Irish famine. The book was second hand so could easily have been from 1980's.

It was a family saga following a young girl who got married and had several children including a set of twins. They were slowly starving due to their crops failing, resorting to eating grass, and i think some of the children died and were buried in a mass grave. Eventually what was left of the family headed off to America i think.

I can't remember what happened after that but would love to read it again 30 years later.

The book was quite thick, white cover and whatever picture it had on the front (a tree?) also had some embossing so it was tactile to touch. Not an author I ever came across again either so maybe not a really well known author of those times?

30 years later this book totally sticks in my mind but I cannot for the life of me remember the title or author....

Under the hawthorn tree?

Definitely Under the Hawthorn Tree by Marita Conlon-McKenna.

Don't think it was that one, the name Diane keeps coming to mind but that could be a redherring.

Was this the one where they bleed a cow to make something to eat at one point? That's always stuck in my mind but I don't know the name, was a school book we did in English

Under the Hawthorn Tree. The sequel was set in the US called Wildflower Girl

The Famine Secret?

Walter Macken The Silent People?

@QuiltedHippo I've googled your description and think that was the Hawthorn Tree as well. I ended up on a school website reviewing the book and that seems to have been the boys favourite bit 😂

@QuiltedHippo That scene stuck in my too. She bled the cow and make a 'cake' for sisters by mixing the blood with grass and mud

Not the same book but about a similar thing I read ‘black harvest’ when I was 9 or 10 and I had nightmares for a week about it 😂😂

Oh, definitely a female author.

My 11yo has just finished Under the Hawthorn Tree at school (in Ireland). I read it at 11 in school. 😂

Oh god I remember that one! I had a kind of perverse fascination with it, read it more than once, I think! 😂

Could it be "Across the Bitter Sea", by Eilís Dillon?

https://www.awesomebooks.com/book/9780439997409/my-story-the-hunger-the-diary-of-phyllis-mccormack/used?gadsource=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwhtWvBhD9ARIsAOP0Goj9enmuvm4hUODn3GGQbE1StdUEirzVwuEZnIN2DedlmQP4QponBBQaAg9wEALww_wcB

Ignore that post it's too modern!

It was Black Harvest by I think Anne something. Terrifying!!

Ohh no sorry I'm totally wrong.

Angela's ashes?

@LilacLemur Not Angela's Ashes but that was another fantastic book 😀

It was definitely fiction and not non-fiction

I read a book like that years ago and i would love to know the name of it too. Was there a girl in it called Aisling? Its where i first saw that name and loved it, I called my first dd that and she was born in 1990 so the date fits. I am almost sure the title had Moon in it, There is a similar book called the rising of the moon but its not it. Google hasn't helped unfortunately.

The Hungry Road?