For more than two centuries, Ireland's Magdalene laundries imposed a vicious form of social and moral control over women and children whose only crime was to be poor, sick, or pregnant and alone. Run primarily by female religious houses, no official history exists of these state-sanctioned reformatories. However, while records remain sealed, the lips of the women incarcerated there are not. In Lilith—A Story of Courage and Determination, novelist Elizabeth Radmore uses her acclaimed storytelling skills to shine a light on a not so distant dark past.
If it wasn't for bad luck, Lilith Connolly would have no luck at all. Born to star-crossed lovers just after the First World War, she and her sister find themselves living with gypsies after the untimely death of their mother. Left by their father to fend for themselves, Lilith narrowly escapes with her life, only to befall a possibly worse fate: incarceration at the notorious Magdalene Laundry in Dublin. Drawing on a well of courage and determination she didn't know she had, Lilith strives to make her way in a world that has trouble seeing past the fact that she is young, female, Irish, and alone.
While Lilith is fictional, her story is inspired by a real person. At a book signing for her first novel, Cushla—Memoirs of a Reluctant Gypsy Girl, Elizabeth was quickly enthralled by a woman's passing mention of her harrowing childhood spent in an institution run by nuns in County Clare, Ireland. Several years later, fate brought them together again over a shared interest in painting. They have since become friends.
