Cushla: Memoirs of a Reluctant Gypsy Girl

Linda M. Bayley is a freelance writer based in Sudbury, Ontario. She is
the author of Estrangement: Poems.

Belfast, September 1953. Kathleen McKenna’s happy childhood is
interrupted when her father, Jack, loses his job. He sets off from home
to find new work, and Kathleen is forced to go with him, leaving behind
her beloved mother and two younger brothers.

After walking for nearly three weeks, Kathleen—or Cushla, as her
father calls her, from

a Gaelic word meaning “beat of my heart”—arrives at the outskirts
of Ballymacruise, a small town on the Irish Sea. Here she and her father
encounter a band of gypsies who shelter them in their camp with the
proviso that they work for their keep. For Kathleen, this may mean
gathering kindling or nicking the odd vegetable from one of the market
stalls in town. For Jack, it means stealing sheep, and fighting in a
bare-knuckles match that earns him the money for their trip home but
costs him for good the hearing in his right ear. Such a different life
from the one they had back home!

Although the entire story takes place over less than three months
(Jack’s goal has always been to get them home by Christmas), Kathleen
goes from a childish 12 to a world-wise 13, learning how to stand up for
herself and encountering first love along the way. She makes a good role
model not just for young readers, but also for anyone still searching
for their place in the world.

Elizabeth Radmore is not the most stylistically gifted of writers, but
what she lacks in technique she makes up for in passion. The story is
drawn from elements of her own experience and that of her parents, and
on every page it

is evident that Radmore cares deeply for her characters, that bringing
Kathleen’s story to the page was as necessary to her as breathing. It
is this passion that makes Cushla is a book worth reading.