Can't wait to read what she writes next!'-Jo-Ann Mapson, author of Solomon's Oak and Finding Casey 'What an entertaining and moving novel! Though I've long known my own ancestors left Ireland because of the devastating potato famine, I never knew much about the history until now.

As heartbreaking as it is heartening, the story of mothers and what they will do for their babies, touches all the tender places with exquisite timing. Beginning in the famine of Ireland and ending in present-day New York, the story gathers momentum and weight as it unfolds, like watching a freight train thunder along the rails filled with the priceless things of life. Cummins' luminous prose, and that feeling we're all hoping to find when we sit down to read: 'This is it-a book I'm going to love.''-Carolyn Parkhurst, author of The Dogs of Babel and The Nobodies Album 'The Crooked Branch explores motherhood, holding onto sanity as life adjusts with a new baby, tilling into that always rich ground of mothers and daughters. 'Even before you come to care about Jeanine Cummins' rich and intricately drawn characters, before you become enmeshed in her skillfully tangled plot lines about the hard and wondrous task of mothering children in times both catastrophic and ordinary.Before any of that, this is what you have to look forward to: the first page, Ms.

The Outside Boy by Jeanine Cummins