Boston publisher announces plans to publish posthumous novel by Nuala O’Faolain, a New York Times best-selling author and a unique voice in her generation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) February 15, 2010 -- When Nuala O’Faolain came to America to announce her spectacular first memoir, she was introduced by Frank McCourt like this, “She stirs up love with a long spoon…You don’t want the book to end: it glows with compassion and you want more, more because you know this is a fine wine of a life, richer as it ages.” Like Angela’s Ashes, Nuala’s Are You Somebody? took the plastic veneer off Irish childhood and revealed the stark truth of growing up in a country strangled by religion and drink, poverty and hopelessness.

Her final novel, wrestling with the issues of age and memory, life’s end and last romance, was finished just months before she announced on Radio Telefís Éireann that cancer had struck. It would take her in a month, leaving behind a body of work so powerful and moving that she has changed her native country. “Writing about herself, Nuala O’Faolain has written about Ireland. It is a cruel, wounded place―and this book has become an important part of the cure."–Roddy Doyle.

Now, GemmaMedia has announced plans to publish this beloved writer’s last novel Best Love, Rosie in America. (Paperback, 420 pages, 978-1-934848-41-8 March 2010.)

Released to rave reviews in France (Sabine Wespieser, Editeur), Best Love, Rosie became an instant best-seller in Ireland, where it was published in May of last year to mark the first anniversary of Nuala’s death. Her posthumous novel is poignant, giving us one last look through those fierce eyes at aging, death, relationships and, as always, love.

Like many a modern, well-travelled woman, Rosie has lived a fascinating life, full of adventure and the pleasure of many lovers in her younger years. Now, facing the challenges of middle-age, she finds that the things that defined her most―work, love, independence―begin to fail her. She comes home to Ireland to care for her elderly aunt Min, trapped by circumstances in sleepy Dublin. But when an opportunity arises to visit New York again, the story takes an unexpected turn...

“Best Love, Rosie...is the book of my years of commuting between the melancholy of Ireland and the optimism of America.”
-Nuala O'Faolain

GemmaMedia’s publisher met Nuala a dozen years ago when her introduction-turned-memoir was looking for an American release. Through a set of circumstances, too Irish not to believe, she brought Are You Somebody? back to the States and found a sympathetic ear in a New York publisher who found the agent who found a press who did the deal, and Nuala’s book sat on the New York Times Best Seller list for more than a year. The lesson was that while there are spectacular exceptions, the path to America for Irish writers is neither short nor smooth. That was the beginning of an idea, GemmaMedia, and a mission to bring Irish writers to the New World.

“Gemma was a gleam in the eye when I met Nuala all those many years ago,” says publisher Trish O’Hare, “but her impact on the press―and me―is hard to describe. Publishing her last novel now, in a bittersweet way, closes a circle.”

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Nuala O'Faolain (1 March 1940–9 May 2008) was an Irish journalist, TV producer, book reviewer, teacher and author. She became internationally well-known for her two volumes of memoir, Are You Somebody? and Almost There; a novel, My Dream of You; and a history with commentary, The Story of Chicago May. Three books were featured on the New York Times Best Seller list, and Are You Somebody? (“A rich, fierce memoir…”-The New Yorker) has sold more than a million copies worldwide. Nuala O'Faolain split her time between rural Country Clare and New York City.


GemmaMedia is a Boston-based publisher of print and new media, focusing on beloved and emerging Irish writers, cultural memoir and adult literacy.