News
Just Published: Annie's Girl by Maureen Coppinger. Maureen Coppinger, one of the first authors signed to Walsh Communications Literary Agency, has just published her first book.
June 2009
Walsh Communications are very proud to announce that one of their first signings to the literary agency, Maureen Coppinger, has just published her first book.
Annie's Girl: How an Abandoned Orphan Finally Discovered the Truth About Her Mother is published by Mainstream Publishing and is available in bookshops now.
Maureen is an Irish Industrial School survivor. Annie's Girl is the true story of her experiences of growing up in this traumatic environment and her determinded search for family and the truth of her parentage.
Publisher's synopsis:
Maureen Coppinger’s earliest memory is of watching the woman she believed to be her mother walk away and abandon her to the care of the nuns at one of Ireland’s notorious industrial schools. She was just three years old.
She remained in the orphanage until the age of sixteen, subjected to cruelty and neglect, and starved of love and affection. One of her closest friends was taken away to an asylum after her spirit was broken by repeated beatings, and Maureen herself faced a constant battle against despair. As one of her best friends was adopted, all she could assume was that she was not good enough for somebody to want to take home and love. It was an environment from which no one emerged unscathed.
Throughout these tormented years, Maureen dreamed only of escape, and when, in 1943, aged fourteen, Maureen received a Christmas parcel, she was told by the nuns it was from her mammy. There was no letter inside explaining the sudden contact, but for Maureen it was a miracle, made even sweeter by the fact that she was able to visit this newly emerged mother in Mullingar, County Westmeath, the place of Maureen’s birth.
Two years later and Maureen’s Leaving Day came. Mrs Hughes, the lady who had sent the mystery package, and whom Maureen truly believed to be her mother, came to claim her. But life in the outside world brought its own challenges, and Maureen’s torment over her identity was not at an end.
Six months later, Maureen set sail for England to live with a young widow and her nine-year-old daughter who had visited Mullingar and felt sorry for Maureen. Before Maureen’s departure, Mrs Hughes confided to her that she was not in fact her mother, and that her real mother had given her up to Mrs Hughes at birth, unable to cope with motherhood. Mrs Hughes knew little about Maureen’s biological mother – she did not know where she was, or even if she was still alive. All she knew was her name – Annie Harte.
Maureen Coppinger – aged now sixteen-and-a-half – left Ireland with just a name, hoping that one day she would return to find out her mother’s true identity, and her own. That chance would eventually come when Maureen met a man in London who offered her the chance to travel to Ireland and look up her family.
Annie’s Girl stands apart as a poignant testimony to the resilience of the human heart. This touching and evocative memoir is the incredible story of an illegitimate industrial school survivor’s profound struggle to overcome a shame-filled past and solve the mystery of her origins
Available from bookshops in the UK and Ireland.
Click here to buy it now from Amazon.
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