Maggie-Now by Betty Smith
I’ve read this several times, but this bittersweet, moving story still made me cry. It’s not as good as her masterpiece, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn , but it’s still another wonderful Irish Catholic Brooklyn novel with memorable characters. They’re like friends that you don’t want to part with by the end of the book. Our story begins when Pat, a young man in Ireland, fancies the beautiful Maggie Rose. No one is going to tie Pat down, however, and his doting mother agrees, so she helps him ‘escape’ to New York where he finds life much tougher than it ever was in Ireland. There, he comes to regret not marrying Maggie, who didn’t waste her precious time waiting for him, but he marries the boss’s daughter, gets a steady job, and makes a life for himself. She dies young, however, and Maggie-Now, wild as a child, ends up taking care of her father, and her little brother. She puts her foot down, though, when she meets the charismatic and Protestant Claude, who she ends up marrying. It’s a ...
