Megan Reed
EDCI 4120
6/20/08

Armstrong, J. (1961). The dreams of Mairhe Mehan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Grade Levels 8-12
Category Realistic Fiction
Read Alouds pp.45-53( Mairhe’s father gives up their home & her brother Mike lies to a girl about his past); pp. 98-103(Mairhe dreamed of the war and then she tells of how the war really went); pp. 104-119(Mairhe found out about her brothers death and gets money for her father to go back to Ireland)
Summary Mairhe lives in the slums of Washington DC with her father and her brother. They are immigrants from Ireland during the Civil War and they don’t really know which side they belong to. The night that President Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation Mike, Mairhe’s brother was out on the town with two of his friends when his friends find an African American walking home by himself. Mikes friends wont leave the man alone so Mike leaves his friends and signs up to fight on the side of the Federals. Mairhe’s father lost his job and dreams of going back to Ireland. After Mike leaves Mairhe starts weaving authentic Irish lace she wants to weave it long enough to reach her brother. She stopped attending church after they brought the first wounded in her church to die. She didn’t support the war she didn’t think her brother should be fighting because it wasn’t their war to fight. She dreams every night of a better life, sometimes in Ireland sometimes in America. One night she woke and realized that she wasn’t dreaming at that moment she knew that her brother had died in the war. It gave her the strength to go back to her church where she met the man she had befriended months earlier, Walt Whitman. She sold her Lace and had enough money to send her father back to Ireland.
Discussion Questions “ Can we believe in union, and in independence as well?”(pp.65) Where do you think Mairhe belongs, in America or in Ireland? What did the lace stand for to Mairhe?
Reader Response I thought this was a good book. I don’t usually like historical books but this one was good. I liked how she showed that the immigrants didn’t think they belonged anywhere. It made the story interesting. I never really thought about how immigrants would feel during wartime when they didn’t really consider America to be their home. Her dreams made me feel sad for her because they didn’t seem like they could be true simply because of the hard times her family had fallen into.