The Graves Are Walking

Starred review from April 2, 2012
Author of nine books on medicine, science, and human behavior, Kelly (The Great Mortality) traces a path of misery and devastation as he documents one of the 19th century’s worst disasters, a nightmarish six years that left twice as many dead as the American Civil War. Beginning in 1845, potato blight led to crop failures, starvation, disease, and despair, mass evictions, widespread unemployment, women with dead infants begging on street corners, and feral dogs digging up the graves of the famine dead. Peasants scaled cliffs in winter in search of seagull eggs, while thousands festered with fever and died in hospitals and overcrowded workhouses. The destitute contrived to be arrested since there was better food available in Irish jails. By the time it ended, more than one million were dead and over two million had fled abroad, leaving Ireland’s population reduced by a third. Kelly mined newspapers, diaries, correspondence, journals, and memoirs for in-depth details, all amplified with 25 b&w images (portraits, drawings, political cartoons) for a remarkable recreation of the period. His exhaustive research covers every aspect, threading the gruesome events into a huge panoramic tapestry that reveals political greed lurking behind the pestilence. Agent: Ellen Levine, Ellen Levine Literary Agency.