A Cottage In Donegal: Mary Doherty’s Story

A Cottage in Donegal opens in 1919 with a rural Irish woman writing about her husband’s death and burial. In the depth of her grief, as Mary is all alone in their bedroom for the first time in over 50 years, she feels the intense need to record everything so that she will not forget him. Almost 10 years later, she finds the account that she wrote of those long, heart rending days at the bottom of her own knitting basket. She decides to write the story of her life so that her posterity will appreciate the strong legacy that was passed on to them. Mary is an old woman, with over eighty years of experiences and memories. So, over the next three years, she hides the fact from her family that she is recording her life. From that point, the story is chronological, beginning first with her birth in 1847 and culminating with her death in 1932. Mary Hudie Doherty lived her entire life in the same townland in County Donegal, Ireland. Her story is informative, historically accurate and draws the reader into a 19th century Irish country woman’s life. It is an entertaining and evocative read. The book, written in memoir form, is from Mary’s perspective.