“Transatlantic,” a National Book Award winner

“Transatlantic,” the 2013 National Book Award winner for fiction goes on my list of recommendations. Author Colum McCann writes of three historical events:  African-American Frederick Douglas’s 1845 visit to Ireland, the 1919 Transatlantic
flight by Alcock and Brown and Senator George Michel’s 1998 peace mediation in Northern Ireland. Woven throughout in luminous prose are the stories of a line of women descended from an Irish maid named Lily Duggan who meets Douglas.
Both historical fiction and fine literature, the chapters compel the reader forward.