True Love

by Fran Withrow 10.2023

“Fran, you just have to read this book,” said my friend Nancy, thrusting her copy of “Foster” into my hands. I nodded assent, tucked it into my bag and went on about my morning.

Later that afternoon, I opened her book and fell in. I gulped it all in one sitting and then started over again. Each time I was swept away by the gentle lyricism of this short, sweet novel that is now part of the school syllabus in Ireland, where its author, Claire Keegan resides. And I can certainly see why.

In “Foster,” a young girl, never named, is taken by her father from her home in Clonegal, Ireland, to stay with her mother’s relatives along the coast in Wexford. She will be spending some time with the Kinsellas, whom she has never met, while her mother juggles her siblings and awaits the birth of yet another child. 

When the girl’s father drops her off with her relatives, we learn that money is very tight in the girl’s home. There’s no money to get the hay in and the father has gambled away their cow. Having the girl stay elsewhere will mean one less mouth to feed. The Kinsellas can keep her as long as they like, the father tells them.  “She’ll ate ye out of house and home,” he says as he drops her off. “She’ll ate, but ye can work her.”

He doesn’t even remember to leave her things with her, so all she has is the clothes on her back and sandals covering her dirty feet. Mrs. Kinsella gently bathes her and dresses her in a boy’s outfit, though no child lives in the home.

As the summer wears on, the girl discovers that Mr and Mrs Kinsella are loving and kind in a way she has not experienced before. They draw her out and help her feel safe and secure. She especially connects with Mr Kinsella, who holds her in his arms as though she were his own.

Narrated by the girl herself, we follow along as she discovers the tragedy that shadows the Kinsellas and leaves her loving them even more. When she learns at the end of the summer that the new baby has arrived and her mother wants her to return home, the first thing she says is, “I have to go back, then?” 

The sweetest part of the book is the ending. What happens when the girl is dropped off at her house and the Kinsellas drive away is worth a whole box of tissues. (Have them handy.) 

This gentle treatise on the power of love and connection and how they can transform a child is worth reading more than once, and will be easy to do since this is a slender volume. Claire Keegan writes with gentle beauty, never succumbing to oversentimentality. The power of her work lies in its subtlety, in the emotions that lie just underneath the narrative, and in the honest depiction of the world through the eyes of this resilient, remarkable young girl.