I received a copy of The Crooked Branch by Jeanine Cummins in exchange for an honest review. This is a book that I can say made my spine tingle – tingle! – while reading. There was so much mystery, intrigue, suspense, emotion, that it was impossible to put down. I finished this within a day, and was telling all my friends about it at dinner. Majella is our main character, who is a new mom to daughter Emma, and struggling with her new role that she just can’t seem to connect with. She lives in Queens with her husband Leo, a chef, in the house that she grew up in. While restless one night, she discovers a diary in the attic from her ancestor Ginny – and is shocked when she reads that Ginny was murderer.
Majella wonders if perhaps she is a bad mother because of this Ginny, that maybe she is genetically programmed to fail at motherhood. After all, Majella and her mother don’t have a great relationship, so maybe she is she destined to have the same with Emma. But as Majella continues to unravel the mystery that is Ginny and her Irish family, she forms a new connection with her mother, forges a possible friendship with another new mother, and starts to regain some of her sanity.
There is so much to love about this novel. Readers get a taste of Majella’s life in New York, but also get to see Ginny’s life back in the late 1800’s during the terrible famine times in Ireland. It was fascinating to travel back in time, and so heartbreaking to read about the famine, the fever, and the pure anguish so many suffered during that time. Majella’s journey into motherhood actually scared me a bit (as someone who hopes to have babies within the next couple of years) because she really seemed to be suffering from post-partum depression, and it was incredibly difficult to read about. But the entire novel is so realistic, I could almost imagine myself right there along with Majella. As I mentioned above, this is a story that I talked to about with many of friends – either about the famine and those trying times, or about motherhood and the difficulties some of them faced after giving birth. This is one of my favorite books of the year by far, and one I highly recommend!
