Una Gallagher is seventeen and pregnant, the result of a single drunken night with the best friend she’s fancied forever. But she can’t tell Cullen he’s going to be a father. They’re in their final year of school, and he’ll feel honour-bound to do the right thing and marry her and work two jobs to keep them, and that will be the end of his dreams.
Una knows she wants to keep her baby.
So when Mam says she has to go and live with the nuns then give her baby up for adoption, she runs away from her tiny home town of Donegal and heads to Dublin, the big city. There she meets an Anglican minister who helps her find a home and a job, and is able to create a new life. But that leaves her family and best friend back in Donegal, trying to work out why she left and where she’s gone.
My Heart Went Walking starts in 1983, and is set entirely in Ireland.
I loved the setting, and I especially loved the way the Irish accents came through in the character’s vocabulary and even the way they talk and think. (There is an extensive glossary for those who aren’t familiar with Irish colloqualisms.)
I loved the realism of the story, the way Una compounds one bad decision (to get drunk) with another (to sleep with Cullen) and another (to run away rather than be forever seen as “that girl” in her small town home). As the oldest daughter in a large Irish family, she knew more than most first-time mothers do about childrearing, even if she was only a teenager.
The story was told in first person from three points of view: Una, Cullen, and Ellie (Una’s next-youngest sister, only eighteen months younger). Una and Cullen both have strong and unique character voices, and that’s much of the strength of the novel. If I had one complaint, it was that Ellie’s voice was too similar to Una’s, and I sometimes confused the two.
Sally Hanan is a Christian writer, but I wouldn’t classify My Heart Went Walking as Christian fiction.
The strength—that’s the novel is authentically Irish—means the language is a little too raw for the more conservative ends of the Christian market. And while the tagline is “An Irish tale of love, loss, and redemption”, the redemption isn’t a come-to-Jesus type of redemption. It’s more subtle, which fits with the characters, the setting, and the time. It feels all the more authentic for not being obvious.
Finally, despite the fact the main character is a teenager, I wouldn’t class this as Young Adult fiction. Sure, teenagers could read it and may well enjoy it. But I think the true fans are going to be women who remember being teenagers in the eighties (or perhaps nineties), in a time before Facebook and mobile phones, a time when running away to the big city so your family wouldn’t find you was entirely possible and believable.
Writers …
If you’ve ever wondered how to use vocabulary and sentence structure to construct realistic dialogue without resorting to nonstandard spelling to show accents, read this book as a text.
Readers …
If you’re a fan of Irish authors such as Maeve Binchy or you’re looking for fiction with underlying Christian values but which steps outside the boundaries of most modern Christian fiction, I think you might enjoy When My Heart Went Walking.
Thanks to Fire Drinkers Publishing and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.
About Sally Hanan
Sally Hanan grew up in Ireland and became a nurse, but she left all the big family dinners, rain, and cups of tea when she and her husband won a green card lottery and moved to Texas. Her family now raised, she works as a book editor and occasional lay counselor and life coach. Sally lives near Austin, Texas, in a gorgeous 1930s home with her hunk of burning love husband and their spoiled-rotten doggie.Also a writer of flash fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, she has won numerous awards for her writing from publishers like iParenting magazine and Faithwriters.
Find Sally Hanan online at:
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About My Heart Went Walking
“I can’t bear to keep walking. But you can’t keep a secret in this town unless you leave with it.”
My Heart Went Walking is a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that sweeps from the small Irish town of Donegal to the “big smoke” of Dublin City; a book that celebrates the pull of family and the chance of redemption. It is a novel for everyone who feels connected to the Irish approach to life—that of grit and laughter—and also for everyone who loves an overriding message of hope and restoration in all things.
Find My Heart Went Walking online at:
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Read the introduction to My Heart Went Walking below:
Erin Bartels is the award-winning author of We Hope for Better Things, The Words between Us, All That We Carried, and The Girl Who Could Breathe Under Water (coming January 2022). Her short story “This Elegant Ruin” was a finalist in The Saturday Evening Post 2014 Great American Fiction Contest and her poetry has been published by The Lyric. She lives in the capital city of a state that is 40% water, nestled somewhere between angry protesters on the Capitol lawn and couch-burning frat boys at Michigan State University. And yet, she claims it is really quite peaceful.
Catherine West is an award-winning author of contemporary women’s fiction. When she’s not at the computer working on her next story, you can find her taking her Border Collie for long walks or reading books by her favorite authors. She and her husband reside in Bermuda, and have two adult children and two beautiful granddaughters.
Lindsay Harrel is a lifelong book nerd with a B.A. in journalism and M.A. in English. She lives in Arizona with her young family and two golden retrievers in serious need of training. Lindsay has held a variety of jobs, including curriculum editor for two universities, medical and business writer, and copywriter for a digital marketing agency. Now she juggles stay-at-home mommyhood with working freelance jobs, teaching college English courses online, and—of course—writing novels.
Elizabeth Byler Younts writes women’s fiction for Harper Collins/Thomas Nelson. She is a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers. She gained a worldwide audience through her first book Seasons: A Real Story of an Amish Girl and is a RITA nominated writer. She is also the author of The Promise of Sunrise series. She has consulted on Amish lifestyle and the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect for two award-winning television shows. Elizabeth lives in Central Pennsylvania with her husband, two daughters, and a cockapoo named Fable.
