Feisty and resilient, Mary Agnes Coyne leaves Ireland alone in 1886 to pursue a new life in America. From the tenements of New York to the alleys of Chicago to the wide plains of Colorado, her indomitable spirit is challenged by discrimination, misogyny, and hardship.

Winner of the Nancy Pearl Book Award and more than a dozen other literary awards for her novels Eliza Waite, Answer Creek, and Hardland, Ashley E. Sweeney will launch The Irish Girl this fall. Based loosely on her great-grandmother's story of coming alone to America as a young girl, The Irish Girl introduces Mary Agnes Coyne. Sweeney lives in La Conner, Washington and Tucson, Arizona. She is at work on her fifth novel.