Desert Hearts (41 page)

For a general sense of what army life was like for women, I am thankful to
Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife
by Frances Roe. It was her grandmother who said to her: “It is a dreadful thing not to become a woman when one ceases to be a girl.”

I want to thank Elaine Weintraub, a former student of mine, who showed me a newspaper clipping about the Choctaw contribution of $700 to the Irish during the Famine. This story is at the heart of this book, for I believe with Irish President Mary Robinson that the best commemoration of those who suffered and died in the past is to take their suffering “into the present with us, to help others who now suffer in a similar way,” wherever that may be.

This book is for my mother, Marjorie Powers Farrell, who, remembering Irish history, kept her heart open to all the dispossessed.

Copyright © 1996 by Marjorie Farrell

Originally published by Signet (ISBN 0451406788)

Electronically published in 2014 by Belgrave House/Regency

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.