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"Stunning! Impressive! One of the best reads of the year!"
Reviewed by Maudeen Wachsmith
Posted June 15, 2003

Emilie Richards has followed up her impressive work, WHISKEY ISLAND, with another story about the irresistible Donaghue sisters. In this one, youngest sister Peggy is featured, but we see plenty of sisters Megan and Casey as well. Combining historical and contemporary elements (present day Cleveland and County Read more...

"Moving emotional drama"
Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted June 28, 2003

While Megan Donaghue and Niccolo Andreani plan to wed, elderly relative Irene Tierney sends a letter to her and her sister Peggy. A former medical student, Peggy decides to follow up on the correspondence that came from Shanmullin, Ireland as a chance to start anew with her autistic son Read more...

"Fiesty sisters face life with wit, wisdom and love"
Reviewed by Sharon Galligar Chance
Posted July 31, 2003

Occasionally life will hand us a situation and we don't know if we are strong enough to handle. This is the case for Peggy Donaghue when she learns that her young son is autistic. So she puts her medical career on hold while she struggles to understand the condition that Read more...

Summary

The Donaghue sisters have shared all the joys and struggles of a complicated past, and at the center of it all has been the Whiskey Island Saloon, a historic Irish-American pub overlooking Lake Erie that has been in their family for five generations. Megan, who runs the saloon, is planning a wedding. Casey is busy settling into the life she shares with her new husband. And Peggy has put her medical degree on hold after discovering her young son, Kieran, is autistic.

When the sisters receive a letter from a relative they have never met, Peggy believes it is the answer to her worries. Irene Tierney is an elderly woman living alone in a remote cottage in the Irish village of Shanmullin. Irene needs the Donaghue sisters' help to learn the truth about her father's death in Cleveland more than seventy-five years ago, and Peggy needs the opportunity the older woman offers. Peggy agrees to go to Ireland to care for Irene in return for a place to live and the chance to spend time working with her son.

After Megan's tumultuous wedding, Peggy and Kieran travel to Shanmullin, where she and Irene form an instant bond. Not everyone, however, is happy to have a stranger in the village. Dr. Finn O'Malley, Irene's physician and a widower with sorrows of his own, resents Peggy's intrusion into Irene's life. But neither Finn nor Peggy can resist their undeniable attraction, though it seems destined to end in heartache.

In Cleveland, Megan has heartaches, too. As her marriage falters, she allows her search for answers to Irene's past to become all-consuming. Needing her own answers, Megan flies to Shanmullin, and Casey soon joins her sisters for a reunion. As a stunning tale of secrets and self-sacrifice, greed and hidden passions unfolds, the lives of each sister will be changed forever.