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Annie's Girl
Annie's Girl
Sep 21, 2024 10:53 AM

Author:Maureen Coppinger

Annie's Girl

The shocking but ultimately uplifting life story of an Irish woman who endured 13 years of cruelty and injustice in an orphanage

Maureen Coppinger's earliest memory is of watching the woman she believed to be her mother walk away and abandon her to the care of the nuns at one of Ireland's notorious industrial schools. She was just three years old.

She remained in the orphanage until the age of 16, subjected to cruelty and neglect, and starved of love and affection. It was an environment from which no one emerged unscathed.

Throughout these tormented years, Maureen dreamed only of escape, and when she was contacted again by her mammy she believed all her dreams were about to come true. Life in the outside world brought its own challenges, however, and Maureen was thrown into turmoil when she discovered that the truth about her past was more murky than she had ever realised.

Annie's Girl stands apart as a poignant testimony to the resilience of the human heart. This touching and evocative memoir is the incredible story of an illegitimate industrial-school survivor's profound struggle to overcome a shame-filled past and solve the mystery of her origins.

Maureen Coppinger emigrated to Canada in 1955, where she married and raised three sons. She worked as a school secretary for 25 years before retiring in 1994 and now spends her leisure time as a volunteer for the Galway Association.

Reviews

Maureen's story is so moving it would wring blood from a stone

—— Martha Long, author of Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes

The author recalls her early suffering with honesty and compassion for those she left behind

—— Morning Star

A heart-rending tale

—— U Magazine

Poignant

—— Sunday Tribune

Economist David Stuckler and epidemiologist Sanjay Basu have spent years correlating government policy and health statistics ... the data is as convincing as the stories are harrowing ... every country that has followed an economic crash with austerity has had a public health catastrophe

—— Richard Godwin , Evening Standard

Far too many books are described as seminal, but The Body Economic really could be ... Stuckler and Basu are in the vanguard of a movement to recast economics as a matter of life and death ... We should organise a massive love-bombing of Treasury and IMF officials with copies of The Body Economic

—— Amol Rajan , Evening Standard

The Body Economic is a bold synthesis of quantitative data, historical cases, personal narratives, and sociological and clinically informed analyses about the effects of investing, or failing to invest, in public health safety nets. In investigating the causes of adverse health outcomes in populations from the United States to the Soviet Union to Greece, Iceland, and the UK, David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu expose many of the myths and mystifications that prop up the regnant ideologies of fiscal austerity. Stuckler and Basu revive the great, progressive tradition of social medicine. Their work is important not just for all those who deliver health care services, but also for anyone who might, just might, one day be a patient

—— Paul Farmer, M.D., Kolokotrones University Professor, Harvard Medical School, and Founding Director, Partners in Health

[Oliver James] does a great job of describing some of the problems in modern society and how the demands of the 21st century can affect a person's happiness... [he] uncovers the answer to how to reconnect with what really matters and learn to value what you've already got. In other words, how to be successful and stay sane.

—— Ana Ivanovic, Tennis Professional , Amazon

Advice that focuses on training you - the parents - rather than your kids. A refreshing approach.

—— Easy Living
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