"Had I become invisible, really stolen by the faeries?"
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Stolen Child by Suzanne Kelly Bottom Dog Press
book review by Barbara Mims Deming
Eight year old Lucy Fahey feels nothing but loss at the beginning of that summer of 1960. Due to a winter infection, she's lost hearing in her left ear. Her mother is facing cancer surgery and will be away from her family. Lucy hasn't learned her lessons—catechism most importantly—and, because of these connectedted factors, the young girl must spend the summer with her grandmother Fahey. Lucy is sure she will lose her spirit in the home of her father's mother.
Her father's family is staid, no-nonsense Irish-American Catholic. Her mother's family is made up of dancers, drinkers, people who joke and laugh, and generations who still feel a close connection to the Ireland they left behind. Lucy adores her Grandma Keary, and when she dies, the child believes her misbehavior at Grandma Fahey's brought the faeries to take the elderly woman away. She is filled with grief.
Is it the summer, or her visit, that shows Lucy another side of Grandma Fahey? Or are the faeries, the Little People her father's mother shares stories of, and Lucy's eager learning of Irish words long unused by this grandmother, drawing the two families together to comfort a child who feels her world is falling apart? Will Lucy Fahey find herself by the end of summer?
Author Kelly has created a delightful tale of a young girl feeling torn between being All-American, or clinging to the lighter parts of her Irish heritage. Readers will be caught up in the culture of these Irish families as well as the 1960's era and may find themselves humming with toes tapping to the music that embraces the words of this novel. Hopefully, the Irish-American author will keep writing about the people this work has proven she knows so well.