Joan McNamee

And Still the Flowers Grow Joan McNamee

On a sunny August afternoon in 1852, on the northern coast of Lake Erie, two dozen bodies from the ill-fated Atlantic Paddle Steamer shipwreck washed ashore and were rapidly retrieved from their watery graves by pioneer farmers homesteading on the Long Point peninsula. Some passenger did survive to tell their stories. While the Long Point families were most receptive to guiding and supporting some of these survivors with what was left of their tattered lives, they never could have imagined how their own lives would be so intimately affected by these destitute survivors. For Mary O'Malley and her three small children, her quest to discover the fate of her missing husband would take a devastating and surprising turn. Fellow passengers, Toby Ryan, a restless 19 year old Irish immigrant had stored up enough hate, revenge and anger to keep him afloat for as long as it took, the deadly consequences of his own unfinished business hanging precariously in the balance.