A native New Yorker, Ashley E. Sweeney is the winner of the Nancy Pearl Book Award and more than a dozen other awards for her previous novels, Hardland, Answer Creek, and Eliza Wai...view moreA native New Yorker, Ashley E. Sweeney is the winner of the Nancy Pearl Book Award and more than a dozen other awards for her previous novels, Hardland, Answer Creek, and Eliza Waite. The Irish Girl is based on her paternal great-grandmother’s story of coming alone from Ireland to America in the late nineteenth century. Sweeney lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest and Tucson.view less