Christina McKenna

Christina McKenna sets comedy and painful memory beside one another in The Misremembered Man. Jamie McCloone is a middle-aged County Derry farmer whose quiet routines still bear the effects of a harsh childhood. Lydia Devine, a schoolteacher encouraged to seek companionship through a personal advertisement, approaches courtship with expectations that do not quite match Jamie's circumstances. Letters, household habits, misunderstandings, and intervention by well-meaning neighbors slowly bring their lives together. The book reached readers in 2008 and gives the rural community more than a decorative role, since local relationships repeatedly shape what Jamie and Lydia believe is possible. McKenna's experience as an artist and teacher complements her attention to landscape, gesture, and eccentric detail. The Misremembered Man permits affection to develop gradually, without pretending that romance can erase either isolation or the past.