Good Ebook reviews from South Carolina

On checking out my Ebooks on #Kindle I  was really pleased to see good reviews from America for my collection of rural short stories The Straw Hat and Other Stories  Happily these stories are finding favour with Irish Americans abroad and bringing a glow to the hearts of those from the 'old country' and making them feel closer to home for the first time in years. These  are 21 short stories about life and love in Irish provincial towns; some of the stories depict an age that has long since gone.

When my father was growing up in the country there was a boxbed in the kitchen - an old wooden bed with a sliding door - and my great grandfather used sleep in it; sometimes to my great grandmother's annoyance he would smoke his clay pipe in there with the partition closed.  What my father told me of these years inspired me to write the story called The Boxbed - about a little boy and his grandfather, of the great affection between them and all the stories the old man used tell the child about the Red Branch Knights and Cuchulann and Oisin. But after the grandfather dies a man comes to the farm to demolish the bed and Paschal realises that his beloved grandfather is never coming back.

In The Straw Hat an old woman decides that this is her last year dressing the itinerant brides and the pick of her bridal collection, donated by the village people, is a beautiful straw hat surrounded by tiny red roses. When a young itinerant girl comes to the door looking for milk for her sister's baby she sees the hat and falls in love with it. Mammy Donovan urges her to try it on and it suits her so well that she lets her keep it, reminded of her own teens when she had set her heart on a straw hat that arrived in a parcel from America but was given to an older sister.

Many people in the Fifties used look forward with delight to the 'parcel' from America and I know my family was no exception.  Sometimes there would be a frilly party dress - maybe not quite the style we were used to in Ireland but very pretty all the same.  I got my first pair of shorts when I was eight years old and felt very self-conscious wearing them out to play. I can still remember imagining everyone was staring at me as I sauntered down the road but they were probably  not thinking of me at all.  No one wants to draw attention to themselves at that age nor to be seen wearing something so different to what other children were wearing - despite the influence of Hollywood and what we saw on  the movies.

 http://www.amazon.com/The-Straw-Hat-Other-Stories-ebook/dp/B00EVXL3ZI