A Measured Thread

A thoughtful and we'll written story centred around the Irish  Maggie O'Connor, a  fiercely independent and strong minded old lady who faces her inner demons as the end of her life approaches.  Maggie has spent most of her life far from her roots in Wisconsin managing her land and  achieving a successful career as a university professor.
Admittedly, this is not an action packed read but it does explore relationships and regrets and how events brought about a separation from her parents in her early adulthood.  It is quite sad towards the end but there is a little inkling of setting right the past at the very end.
I would recommend it you enjoy to focus on character rather than action.

A beautifully written book about an Irish immigrant living in rural America and approaching the end of her life.  The story follows Maggie as she relives her earlier life through letters she wrote to her parents.  Love, heartbreak, secrets, friends this has it all.  A thoroughly enjoyable read.

A incredibly beautiful story. It is the story of Maggie O'Conner an Irish immigrant who left her homeland at a young age to come to America.  She settled in Wisconsin and became a college professor.  Even though she was successful in her professional life there were regrets along the way in her personal life.  As she is coming to the end of her life she reflects back on the decisions she made..  
I really enjoyed this book as it told Maggie's story past and present.  For me it was very thought provoking and it is so well written I felt like these people were my friends.

Thank you Net Galley for allowing me to read this incredible book for my honest opinion.

A Measured Thread by Mary Behan is a lovely story, beautifully written. We meet Maggie O'Connor, who after an accident where she breaks her wrist, needs some help. As a widow with no children, she hires a helper who she comes to see as a granddaughter. Discovering that her cancer has returned and spread, she opts for no treatment and makes plans for the end of her life. However, Isobel, her helper, begins to read some old letters that Maggie had sent to her parents when she first left Ireland for America and Maggie's great secret is revealed. This secret affects Maggie and Isobel, changing the course of their relationship...and of Maggie's life.

This beautifully descriptive novel was a joy to read.  Thank you to the author, St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

This book felt like a warm hug. Heartwarming and soothing. 
Behan does an excellent job with the imagery - I can see Maggie so clearly, in her rustic cabin on the Wisconsin prairie. Feisty and capable, taking care of her land, and creating community. 
Maggie is a character I loved to read about (prequel please!) - smart, capable, educated, and self-assured. Relationships are important, but she is first and foremost her own woman. 

Through this delightful story, we see Maggie protecting her land with a prescribed burn when one wrong step changes her world as she knows it. Her journey from a fully independent woman to one that needs hospitalization and rehab, to finally returning home but needing help, we see Maggie come to terms with her own mortality. 

As she learns to accept help, Maggie finds that her life is enriched with not just friends and neighbours, but with Isobel who comes to help her. As her strength returns and she begins to sort through the accumulation of her life,  including the belongings of her late husband, Maggie and Isobel discover a box of letters - letters that Maggie wrote her family in Ireland every week. We don't just get to see the letters, but the memories that surround them and we get to understand more about what makes this fantastic woman tick. But underneath it, Maggie has a hidden past, one she has never admitted, let alone confronted. 

What will become of Maggie? How will her live change now that she has acknowledged her past? What will happen to her little slice of heaven in the Wisconsin valley? How far will her bully of a neighbour go?

Truly worth the read to find out.

A Measured Thread is a beautifully written memoir of Maggie's life before she succumbs to cancer.  She has been fiercely independent most of her life after emigrating to the US from Ireland in her teens.  Maggie has only one regret- and it's one that has shaped and colored her entire life.  Her journey to find peace is moving and captivating.

I received a free electronic ARC of this excellent historical novel on December 1, 2020, from Netgalley, author Mary Behan, and publishers Lawrence Gate Press and BooksGoSocial. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. This is a warm, soft-hearted tale that I found totally compelling. It is one I highly recommend to friends and family and will plan to read, again, down the line. If you are not familiar with Aldo Leopold, please research his contributions to restoring farmed-out land into a healthy, nourishing prairie. Aldo Leopold and his family invested their lives in this project. He and his children and grandchildren have researched and written much on the subject. And of course, the "measured thread" refers to the Greek Fates, goddesses Clotho, the spinner, Lachesis, with a measuring tape, and Atropos, the elderly lady with the knife, prepared to cut the thread of life.

In the author's information, you will find a similar history to that of our protagonist, Maggie O'Connor, which accounts for the perfect reenactment of time and location in our tale. As Mary Behan shares with us, history is merely experiences remembered. She shares with us her own experiences with things as varied as traveling alone half-way around the world for a college scholarship and the steps in becoming a US citizen, awaking in students the love of learning, creating an Aldo Leopold prairie in her own back yard, to years of hosting winter solstice parties in her neighborhood. An Irish immigrant and professional woman, a retired professor who loved her work, Maggie is childless and ten years widowed. She has spent the last 50 years of her life in the cabin she and her husband made their home in the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin. Retirement has given her more time to make improvements and repairs to the homestead, to walk her fields and sort through and weed-out her possessions. There are cousins scarcely known in Ireland, but no closer family to inherit her home, and they are all her age as well, not long for this world. She changed her will when her husband died, leaving her worldly goods to those cousins, but knows that they will simply sell it all and divide out the money. She can't blame them for that, but she is fairly sure that her years of work returning the farm and land to health will be almost immediately lost. The pushy neighbor who offers to buy her out every chance he gets mentions cornfields, or perhaps sub-divisions.

And then mere days before her 80th birthday, she takes a fall on the basement stairs. Broken right wrist, several ribs, right foot, twisted ankle, and wrecked right knee has her in hospital and rehab for weeks, and her recovery is not going to be speedy. The house is on several levels and is isolated, she will not be able to drive for a while, and though her neighbors for the most part are very helpful she accepts that she is going to have to have help if she gets to go home. The young man who has helped his father over the years to make improvements and provide maintenance on the farm will be glad to help but he has a business to run, so his time is limited.

Enter Isobel Babic. A college student in nearby Madison, Isobel is cheerful, helpful, responsible. She will be conscientious and has several days a week she can help. She will of course need to bring her dog... And in the quiet afternoons, she will willingly read aloud the recently uncovered box of letters Maggie sent weekly to her parents in Ireland back in the long ago... Letters returned to her by those cousins after the death of her mother. Maggie is of two minds about reading the letters. She is quite content with her life, more pleasant than otherwise, comfortable, productive. A life well-lived. Going back to those times of change and youthful folly and angst might not be the thing at this point in her life. But it might help Isobel deal with changes coming in her own world.

This was well written story told by a woman whose life was beginning to come to an end. I like the way it came to fruition with the reading of her letters. Highly recommend

Maggie is an independent 80 year old, living alone in rural Wisconsin. A fall forces her to hire a young woman to help out, leading to a trip down memory lane, back to her youth in Ireland and to her life after moving to the States.
Very pleasant read and well crafted plot, left me wanting to find out more!