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Poverty breeds injustice. That injustice is all the more terrible, Evelyn Doyle writes in this affecting memoir, when it is visited on children--in this instance, she and her five siblings, who became a cause célèbre in Ireland half a century ago. The year is 1953. After his wife leaves him for another man, young Evelyn's father puts his six children in church-operated industrial schools while he journeys across the water to England to find work. When he returns a few months later, he finds that the law now considers his children to be permanent wards of the state. The nuns who have taken charge of Evelyn's fate are far from awful, and, we learn, Evelyn's father is less than a saint. Still, family is family, and, in the face of considerable odds, he labors tirelessly for his children's return. As the battle spills from one courtroom to another, the Doyle family earns the sympathies of neighbors and strangers alike, and even a few cheers from the good sisters. The basis for the independent film Evelyn, Doyle's memoir remains full of tension and uncertainty to the very end, offering both a memorable portrait of hard times and a fine tribute to the power of familial devotion. --Gregory McNamee
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