When a young woman promises her dying mammie that she will keep her seven siblings together in the family home, she has no idea of the huge responsibility this would become.
1940s' Ireland was a cruel and unforgiving country to abandoned and orphaned children. Notoriously run by Religious Orders of Nuns and Brothers, orphanages and church homes were a final bitter resort.
Devoutly religious, Rose McGorry's one obsession as she approached her death was praying to her Heavenly Father that her beloved children never suffer the pain of being separated or the shame of succumbing to the poverty that surrounded them.
How these eight young people managed to stay close and survive is a tribute to the mother who loved them and the strength with which she imbued all her children.
Deirdre was born in 1946 in Auckland, New Zealand, the fourth of eight children. Her father was Irish born and her mother was born in New Zealand. Deirdre married Peter McGorry in 1966 and they moved to Australia in 1968. Their daughters were born in 1971 and 1976. Writing letters to the daily newspapers was her only literary outlet as she worked as an accountant all her working life. Nearly two hundred published "Opinions" in The West Australian Newspaper made her name easily recognisable, frequently greeted by strangers with: "Don't I know you?" When her mother died in 2005, Deirdre was forcibly struck by the knowledge that Peter, to all intents and purposes, never had a mother. This was devastating for her. Over the next ten years, she talked with his siblings on their trips to Ireland and New Zealand. Retirement gave her the time and impetus to tell this amazing story.
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