Land of Heart’s Desire

In 1840, Mary and Peter Healy flee Ireland’s County Sligo with little more than their seven children and a single fierce hope—freedom from poverty and English oppression and a chance to own their own land. Across icy seas, they begin their new life in Toronto where they weave themselves into the fabric of the relocated. Unhappy with their industrial city life, the couple buy land, moving the family to Shefford. Their dreams are once again ruled by the English. The Healys’ only chance of escaping prejudice and owning a farm lies in America. Moving south to Cincinnati then west through Illinois and into Iowa, they discover their farm costs them more than comfort. Each new plan for a better life exacts a terrible toll until their dream is built on the absence of those they love most.

In 1846, amidst the famine in County Limerick, Ronan and Brighid Murphy, along with their young daughter Aisling, flee hunger, determined to start again. Ronan finds work in America, digging the Illinois-Michigan Canal; and Brighid follows with Aisling, stopping first in the slums of New York. A terrible fire propels her onward, seeking Ronan in Illinois for protection and support, but her life is shattered by accident and abandonment. Widowed and vulnerable, Brighid must marry Michael Shea to survive, but tragedy reduces their household to a single member who must find her way in the world. Assuming a new name among the German settlers of eastern Iowa, Aisling loses her Irish connection, her family history, and her sense of belonging.

In Dubuque, the two bloodlines converge, each carrying what the other has lost: a missing child, a reclaimed identity, a fragile chance at home. Land of Heart’s Desire follows these intertwined journeys—raw with grief, stubborn with hope—as two families fight to give their children a life they never had.

Ann Hanigan Kotz reimagines her own family’s passage across oceans and continents, asking what a home costs and what heritage is worth when survival demands reinvention.

A sweeping, tender novel of exile and endurance, Land of Heart’s Desire brings to life the sacrifices, small mercies, and persistent courage of the Irish immigrants who remade themselves in a new world.