Novels

When Iris Bowen makes a promise to her dying husband, it’s a promise she never expected to keep. But when she’s forced to confront her own mortality she has to honour that promise, and search for the woman who gave birth to their daughter.

HER NAME IS ROSE is the story of a free-spirited, impulsive, but indomitable mother and her beautiful, gifted daughter—two women connected by love but otherwise alone in the world. A contemporary story whose location moves from the west of Ireland to London to Boston, and back again.

This is IRIS BOWEN’s story. A quest-story with a twist. A reversal of the usual adoption plot. Instead of the adopted child searching for a birthmother, or the birthmother searching for a child, this is a story of Iris’s search to find the woman who gave birth to her daughter. A story from the rarely dramatized place—the place of an adoptive mother. Iris pitches herself into an unknowable, untrustworthy mission armed with nothing more than a 20-year-old envelope.

REVIEWS

“Breen’s characters immediately invite the reader to go on a heartwrenching journey that’s enhanced by her skillful plotting and authentic, lyrical descriptions of the Emerald Isle. A moving first novel.”— Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Check off one novel: I read, and liked, “Her Name Is Rose” by Christine Breen. I kept it in part because it was an adoption story. It’s a novel about a mother who is afraid she may receive a cancer diagnosis and whose husband just died of cancer, searching for her college-age daughter’s birth mother so that the girl won’t be alone in the world. Much of the action centers around that search, but it’s largely a plot driver. The emotional center of the book is really about people learning to trust one another more than it is about genetics and parentage. If you like a somewhat romantic book, “Her Name Is Rose” is a good one. I’d put it on the shelf with “The Secrets of Midwives” by Sally Hepworth.  — Motherlode NYTimes: Shelf, iPad, Bed Table: Reading, May 2015 KJ Dell’Antonia

“Making her debut, Breen has created a warmhearted and poignant story. It focuses on Iris’s physical and emotional journey, but supporting narratives from Rose and other bit players help flesh out the enormity of Iris’s mission. Fans of Maeve Binchy and Catherine Ryan Hyde will appreciate this witty story of family, acceptance, and the power of belonging.”— Booklist

“The story is beautifully written, with lovely descriptions of people and places, and an underlying feeling of conviction and love.” — Kelly Strom, The News-Gazette

“In this lyrical debut novel, Christine Breen weaves a tale about the ties that bind — biological, legal, emotional — and the many varieties of devotion.  The story moves fluidly from the west coast of Ireland to London to Boston and back, stopping in gardens and museums and concert halls along the way, accumulating characters who live and breathe and teach each other how to love.”— Christina Baker Kline, international bestselling author of Orphan Train