The first inklings of what became my debut novel were inspired by a photo I saw in an Irish newspaper of a woman staring out a window on O’Connell Street—one of the busiest shopping streets in Ireland, yet she looked so alone. I knew where her building was as I had spent many weekends going up to Donegal and back on McGeehan’s bus, and their final stop was at the cinema right across from her. That’s when I pictured a young, pregnant runaway stepping off the bus into the “big smoke” with no clue where to go next.
My husband is adopted, and we’ve spent years learning more about his birth family. He got to meet his birth mother, who was hidden away for the last six months of her pregnancy in a mother and baby home, and then shamed into giving him up for adoption. He had lovely adoptive parents, and the half-sister he’s grown to know has told him many times that he was lucky his mother didn’t keep him because of her mental health issues, but it took him a long time to find his centre.
The search for his dad has taken a lot longer, and it’s such a fascinating story that I could well write a novel about it all. Suffice to say that he now has four more half-siblings… and counting. They were all adopted, some of them part of the shameful setup where they were sold to adoptive parents so the grandparents’ reputation wouldn’t suffer.
In my novel, I talk quite a bit about the shame a young girl would have felt and how she might have been treated if she decided to keep her baby in 1980’s Ireland. At the start of the book, her mother automatically says she’ll have to give her baby to the nuns, and that provides the impetus for her to run away and see if she can survive.
I grew up in Ireland, and the scenery is stunning. You can drive anywhere and you’ll see more undulating fields and mountains, lakes, windy roads. It’s all breath-taking. As a writer, there was no end of settings I could write about, but Donegal is particularly beautiful, and the people there are just lovely, so that’s where I placed my main character Una.
I put her in a large family because I’m one of six children, and it was familiar to me to have so many people buzzing around and helping. We’re all well grown now, and spread out over the country, with one in London now and myself in Texas, but you never forget the feeling of all sitting together in the living room to watch the telly or sitting around the table for dinner.
The ‘80s in Ireland was a great time to be a teenager—good music, no internet, no cell phones. I pledge the fifth on the hair though. We were able to go wherever we wanted and feel safe, and we laughed a lot. I’ve tried to capture all that in this book too, and I hope readers love it as much as I loved writing it.
My Heart Went Walking by Sally Hanan (Fire Drinkers Publishing, hardback £25.99, paperback £14.99, eBook £7.21, audiobook £17.99) is available from all good book retailers.
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