Nuala O'Faolain

Award-winning memoirist O'Faolain takes a new direction with her latest book, a biography of Chicago May, who was an unremarkable Irish country girl until she stole her family's earnings and ran off to America. She began a life of crime as a prostitute in 1890s Chicago, and from there crime and a new moniker followed her to New York to London to Paris. Along the way, May fell in and out of love and crossed paths with criminals and historical figures alike. O'Faolain's search for May's soul, told with her usual mesmerizing, lovely prose, is the most touching aspect of her biography. In O'Faolain's hands, May, a moderately infamous character in Irish and American tall tales, is revealed to be intelligent and emotional, and most of all a product of her time. This is not only a thorough portrait of a woman on the wrong path; it is also a fresh and informative view of turn-of-the-twentieth-century America, and fascinating testimony to the need to tell and preserve true stories from all walks of life.