"Stunning! Impressive! One of the best reads of the year!"

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 Mayo Ireland, with a story about the Donaghue ancestors in Cleveland in the 1920s} this book has something for everyone.

As the story opens Megan is dressing for her wedding to ex- priest Niccolo Andreani. They are in for a surprise though as at the reception, held in the family business, The Whiskey Island Saloon, a fierce storm is brewing without their knowledge -- a tornado traps the revelers in the saloon with, it seems, no way out. But the sisters' father, Rooney, remembers passageway beneath the saloon -- a tunnel used by bootleggers in the 1920s. Tragedy is averted but what is the strange image Niccolo sees on the tunnel wall?

Meanwhile, Peggy has left her medical school studies to care for her young son Kieran who has been diagnosed as being autistic. So she is off to Ireland to meet an elderly cousin, Irene, who contacted them via the Internet looking for information on her father, Liam Tierney, who had disappeared in Cleveland in the 1920s. While there Peggy meets Finn O'Malley who has abandoned his medical practice after a tragic accident took the lives of his wife and young sons two years previous, leaving him barely able to care for his surviving child, an 11-year-old daughter, Bridie, let alone care for patients. Peggy however has found friends in not only Irene, but in young Bridie who is so good with young Kieran.

Casey, having become the recent bride of high school friend Jon Kovats, is happy in her marriage but the young marriage of Megan and Niccolo is having its problems. Seems Niccolo, who had learned how to be a priest, has no idea how to be a husband and is seemingly more involved in his business venture which provides help to at-risk youth, than he is in keeping Megan happy. When a planned weekend away gets cancelled, Megan storms out of the house and decides to visit Peggy in Ireland. It isn't long before Casey decided Peggy and Megan can't have all the fun and she is joining them at Irene's cottage as well.

As Peggy struggles to help Kieran, she also hears stories from Irene who eventually admits she knows more about her father then she first led the sisters to believe. Stories of what really happened to her father, Liam, in Cleveland and how much the families really are connected. A story of bootlegging, and of the tragic story of the first love of the sisters' grandfather, Glen Donaghue.

But there is romance in store for Peggy as well. She helps Finn come out of the depression and guilt he has felt for the past two years, but both know they have to take it one day at a time and fear they will never have a future together. It takes a near tragedy for them to finally find out what the future will hold.

I don't know how Emilie Richards does it. She so beautifully combines several storylines not only without confusing the reader but with immediately drawing in the reader to each storyline as they are told several chapters at a time. Not any easy feat! I felt as if I was in County Mayo, Ireland with Peggy (or was it just wishful thinking?) and could image the settings in Cleveland as well with Richard's deft hand at describing the settings. The characters are people the reader feels they know as well. I was so glad I was able to read these two connected books, WHISKEY ISLAND and THE PARTING GLASS back to back, and although it isn't necessary to read WHISKEY ISLAND before reading THE PARTING GLASS, I believe your reading experience will be enhanced if you do. THE PARTING GLASS is an absolutely first-rate read, one I couldn't put down once I started. I can give no higher praise than to say I am going to now be reading all the Emilie Richards books I've missed - books fortunately I already have in my TBR pile.

Reviewed by Maudeen Wachsmith
Posted June 15, 2003

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.