Book Review – City Of Hope

by Kate Kerrigan (Macmillan) ISBN 9 780230 747715

This is a very different kind of read. When you think of the world depression we are all battling with at the moment, you are just amazed at this 1930’s woman, Ellie Hogan, who leaves Ireland to take New York by storm.

If only there was someone today who had the money and courage of Ellie Hogan. She builds up entire neighbourhoods that flourish. She takes in every stray adult or child that she can deal with and helps them overcome hunger and poverty.

She is shocked when she arrives in New York to find that Americans are begging and looking for jobs. The city of parties that she remembers from ten years ago has vanished. Ellie sees destitute families on every corner and takes them in and pours her energy and passion into a refuge for the homeless.

Her own private grief of losing her husband, John, in Ireland is put aside as she tackles this mammoth task of helping wherever she can. While she is used to poverty in Ireland, she is devastated by the misery in New York. One day, someone she thought she would never see again steps through her door and changes her life.

This story is so well written that you feel as if it is Ellie’s real life story.

Dee Andrew
5/5