"Moving emotional drama"

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 Kieran. Irene believes that the Donahue siblings can assist her in learning what happened to her father who died over seven decades ago in Cleveland near where the sisters currently live.

While in Cleveland, Megan struggles with her new marriage and trying to solve Irene's mystery. In Ireland, three generations fall in love with one another, as Irene becomes friend, mother and grandmother to Peggy and Kieran. Peggy and Kieran return the warmth. However, Irene's physician widower Dr. Finn O'Malley wants the Yanks to go back to Lake Erie because he fears the attraction he feels to the single mom, one that she reciprocates.

The sequel to WHISKEY ISLAND, THE PARTING GLASS continues with the lives of the Donaghue sisters and those within their sphere. The story line is filled with angst, at times overwhelmingly so, but the novel never loses reader attention as the audience cherishes Megan and Peggy and quickly adopts Irene too. Emilie Richards provides an emotional romance that leaves her fans breathless.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted June 28, 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.