Chapter1

The Land ofPromise

Margaret Keane was twenty years old. Most of her friends were married and had at least one child. She’d observed the routine of ritual courtship in her small town in Ireland: Handsome lad charms the pants off pretty young maiden. Maiden gets in a family way, and there is a rush to have a church wedding. Two months later, the handsome lad is spending more time at the pub drinking Guinness with his mates than supporting his pregnant wife. Margaret vowed that this would not be herfate.

She was just over five feet tall, with long chestnut-brown hair and dark brown eyes. Music was her passion, and people loved to listen to her sing. Early on at the parish school, they’d tagged her as a young star. St. Patrick’s used her celebrity to attract people to fill the pews and the offeringbasket.

The Keene family ran and lived in a modest guest house of eight rooms in Fanore, a seaside village in northern County Clare. It was a perfect place to visit to enjoy ocean breezes and day adventures into the Burren. The guest house was usually quite busy, except for during the dark days of winter—starting after Christmas and ending a week before Saint Patrick’sDay.

Margaret’s beautiful singing voice had enthralled Robert Stroud, the owner of the guest house. “Margaret, my dear, you are far too talented to stay in Ireland,” he’d told her. “No one here appreciates your abilities the way people in London or Manchester would. I have connections inboth.”

“Mr. Stroud, thank you for your kind words and your offer to help. I just might take you up on it one day,” she said, trying to bepolite.

Margaret tolerated the English. Her mother, Ellen, had lost over half of her family in the potato famine and frequently would go on diatribes about how the English could have done more and how they treated the Irish worse than the Americans treated their slaves. Margaret stayed current on the issues of Home Rule and was a big supporter of Charles Stewart Parnell. She’d even made the trek to Ennis to see one of his speeches. Her passion for Irish politics and world affairs projected a level of intensity that was uncommon for a woman of her age and off-putting to potential suitors, who eventually gave up trying to win herfavor.

The defeat of the First Home Rule vote in both houses of Parliament in 1886 dashed Margaret’s hopes for a more independent Ireland. At almost the same time, she received an offer to understudy as Josephine in a London production of Gilbert and Sullivan’sHMS Pinafore. When she overheard the sponsor of the offer, Robert Stroud, telling a guest that he hoped Margaret wouldn’t embarrass him with her “bloody Irish accent,” she finalized her decision and had the difficult discussion with herparents.

“I’m sorry, Mother, but I’ve got to leave. I love you and Father dearly, but I’ll not be happy marrying one of the local boys and singing in church everySunday.