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"THE REMEMBERING: Of Leather & Stone is an extraordinary achievement in historical fiction that will transport readers through time while touching their hearts." K.C. Finn
Forgotten by Time, Rediscovered by Fate
A century after her birth, Jessie (Ambrosini) Collins is laid to rest beside her husband, Joseph Cornelius Collins, in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Milford, Massachusetts. Weeks later, while settling her estate, her children and grandchildren discover an old hope chest filled with the artifacts and memories of her life.
Among the curiosities and treasures is a tied bundle containing three handwritten journals, previously unknown to the family. In time, they would come to realize that what they held in their hands was the family legacy—pictures of life passed down by those who lived before—of how it was with them in their time.
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It is 1845 the first year of the Great Famine in Ireland when fourteen-year-old Cornelius Collins begins a harrowing seven-year struggle for survival. At twenty, he escapes to Liverpool, England, securing a one-way third-class passage aboard a "coffin ship" bound for America. Against all odds, he survives the forty-one-day Atlantic crossing on the packet ship Clara Wheeler, landing in Boston, Massachusetts.
There, he is processed and released into the streets alone to face the "land sharks" eager to take what little he possesses, including his life. Fate intervenes, and an Irish American welfare society helps him find work as a bootmaker in the town of Milford. Determined, Cornelius vows to save every penny and send it back to Ireland to support his family.
From the mountains of northern Italy to the famine-stricken Irish countryside, to Boston— ‘Beacon of Freedom’—and the prosperous industrial town of Milford, Massachusetts, where technology is changing everything—these are the gritty and gripping origin stories of two very different immigrant families whose lives and destinies are forever altered by Milford—a place where people and fortunes are made…Of Leather and Stone.