{"id":2948,"date":"2018-08-21T10:15:23","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T10:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jameslawless.net\/?p=2948"},"modified":"2018-08-21T10:15:23","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T10:15:23","slug":"the-rose-of-tralee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/?p=2948","title":{"rendered":"The Rose of Tralee"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Laura was chosen as The New York Rose for the Rose of Tralee festival, she was twenty two. The choice was influenced no doubt by her Irish dancing ability and prowess in Gaelic\u2014an American girl who could be an Irish cail\u00edn, having been sent for years since she was small to Miss O\u2019Donovan\u2019s dancing class in Brooklyn.
\n\tIt meant so much to her dad to see her wearing the New York Rose sash. He never even did his traditional moan about the cost of women\u2019s apparel when she purchased her Marc Jacobs handbag from Saks. He boasted that the next step for her would be Miss America, but Laura wasn\u2019t interested in going the beauty pageant way; she wanted to be judged for her other attributes and told her dad and he should have known \u2014claiming as he did to know so much about Ireland\u2014 that the Rose of Tralee wasn\u2019t a beauty contest as such but had more to do with personality and different qualities in a girl, apart from just physical beauty.
\n\tIt was mid-afternoon. He was catching her between lectures. She was telling Danny about the comp\u00e8re, the questions he asked. \u2018I did the Cooney\u2019s reel in my bare feet for god sake and played Timpeall an Ghleannt\u00e1in on the tin whistle. We made all the dads tearful, weaving them back into the fabric of Irish life.\u02bc
\n\t\u2018And mothers?\u02bc he said.
\n\tShe threw Danny a critical stare.
\n\t\u2018Sorry. I put you off your train of thought.\u2019
\n\tHe would have liked to discuss her mother’s diaries with her but he remembered the promise. You can read about sex but you can\u02bct talk about it. It was too painful for Laura to bring her mother\u2019s peccadillos into the open, but she was trusting in Danny to a certain extent\u2014so far will she go and no further\u2014 and for that he was grateful; it was leading somewhere, explaining partly at least Laura\u02bcs unease about sex on the basis of her mother\u02bcs behaviour. And maybe she would eventually find some way of explaining to him also about the powerful pull in her relationship with her uncle Thady.
\n\tIt\u2019s okay,\u2019 she said tossing her head, swinging those bangs, like she was shaking any thought of her mother out of her system. \u2018I remember going down by Limerick,\u02bc she said pressing a book and her lecture notes close to her breasts, \u02bband all the bonfires greeting the Roses. The New York Rose, I couldn\u2019t believe it, that that was me they were cheering and they were cheering the Liverpool Rose and the Sydney Rose as well and the London Rose who I remember had an awful cold, not to mention all the counties of Ireland; it was something that was not meant to be emotional but it got emotional.\u2019
\n\t\u2018Maybe I\u2019m learning,\u2019 he said.
\n\t\u2018What are you learning, Danny?\u2019
\n\t\u2018What\u2019s kitsch in the old country is still fresh and celebratory in America.\u2019
\n\tHer eyes lighted up. \u2018The night out with the escort.\u2019 She glanced at her watch as they walked across the quadrangle. \u02bbI have a couple of minutes. I gotta tell this you before I go.\u2019
\n\t\u2018You gotta?\u2019
\n\tShe stopped in the middle of the quadrangle. \u2018You\u2019re not jealous, are you, Danny boy?\u2019
\n\t\u2018What do you think?
\n\t\u2018Oh my god, they are jealousy bells I\u2019m hearing.\u2019
\n\t\u2018No, they\u2019re not.\u2019
\n\t\u2018I\u2019d like them to be jealousy bells,\u02bc she said as her view of Danny was obstructed by students hurrying between them on their way to lectures. \u02bbHe was a cute boy,\u02bc she said when Danny came in to view again, \u02bbbut a bit too young; immature, Dad said.\u2019
\n\t\u2018Your father vetted him?\u2019
\n\t\u2018Not vetted, Danny. He was only nineteen.\u02bc
\n\t\u2018And your uncle Thady came.\u2019
\n\t\u2018He came down from Dublin on the train. Dad already told you. Uncle Thady doesn\u2019t drive now. Funny, isn\u2019t it, after driving a fire truck all his life? Maybe he was used to getting his own way in the traffic. And we all went off to see the Cliffs of Moher. Dad was really taken by those cliffs on the way down to Kerry. And Uncle Thady, he was taken by all the beautiful girls. Maureen thought it was dirty.\u2019
\n\t\u2018What?\u2019
\n\t\u2018The way he was going on, ogling, she said, those young women and hey, I was one of them.\u2019
\n\t\u2018You mean he was ogling you?\u2019
\n\tShe bowed her head.
\n\t\u2018Laura, I\u2019m sorry. I didn\u2019t mean…\u2019
\n\t\u2018I better go.\u2019
\n\t\u2018Look, I\u2019ll call to your room after work. Okay?\u2019 <\/p>\n

From American Doll<\/strong> \"\"<\/a>in paperback and ebook https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1530576687\/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vamf_taft_p1_i8 or
\nhttps:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/American-Doll-James-Lawless\/dp\/1530576687\/ref=sr_1_4_twi_pap_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1534845789&sr=8-4&keywords=james+lawless or https:\/\/www.smashwords.com\/books\/view\/767783
\n‘Few authors today can consistently create novels of such breadth \u2013 infusing the spirit of Irish charm into the events of now \u2013 a marriage of intrigue and romance that is polished and a joy to read. San Francisco Review of Books.<\/em>
\n‘Lawless has his finger on the pulse of post-9\/11 America, and his depiction of the bitterness and paranoia within Laura\u2019s family is \u2013 in the context of Trump\u2019s rise to prominence \u2013 frightening.’ Sunday Independent<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Laura was chosen as The New York Rose for the Rose of Tralee festival, she was twenty two. The choice was influenced no doubt by her Irish dancing ability and prowess in Gaelic\u2014an American girl who could be an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2948"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2957,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2948\/revisions\/2957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}