This article, written by Chris Delaney, appears on Huff Post Books.

An American Dream: The Novel Behind the Academy Award

Every immigrant experience — be it Mexican, Italian or Syrian — is both the journey to an unfamiliar place and a pining for home. Colm Tóibín beautifully captures this experience in his novel Brooklyn, which tells the story of Eilis Lacey.

A young Irish woman in the 1950s, Eilis (pronounced “Eye-lish”), with the help of her older sister and Father Flood, a kindly priest, is able to travel to an Irish women’s boarding house in Brooklyn, New York. After the strenuous boat ride across the Atlantic, Eilis finds work in a department store, and with the help of Father Flood she enrolls in night school with aspirations to become a bookkeeper.

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