A century-old trunk has been dug up near the railway village of Sterfontein. Inside is the lost journal of Victorian author Elizabeth Tenant – and what appears to be the remains of a child.

Michael, a university student recovering from a broken heart, is intrigued by what the journal describes: a scarlet curtain billowing above the desert, covering the entrance to another world. But things become even stranger when a line in the journal seems to be connected to Michael and his cosmologist mother, written a hundred years before their time. Without much to go on, Michael travels to the old Karoo hotel where Elizabeth wrote her novel Mirage. Amid talk of omens in the sky, ancient prophecies and the end of the world, he tries to decipher the journal’s secrets.

As one mystery leads to the next, constellation-like patterns between his own life and Elizabeth’s appear, helped along by Renata, a self-proclaimed medium, and Oom Sarel, the local museum curator. But as time starts to dissolve in the mirages of the Karoo, it becomes more and more difficult to know what is real and what is not.

And why can’t he shake the feeling that he’s been to the village before?

This book asks the crucial question of how it came to pass that on the 25 May 2018, the Irish electorate voted by a landslide in favour of changing its abortion legislation that, for the previous thirty-five years, had been one of the most restrictive regimes in Europe. The author shows how, alongside traditional campaigning tactics such as street demonstrations, door-to-door canvassing, and the distribution of pro-choice merchandise and information leaflets, a key strategy of pro-choice advocacy groups was to encourage first-person abortion story-sharing by women in their efforts to repeal the Eighth Amendment, which had effectively banned abortion provision in the country. The book argues that a normalizing of abortion talk took place in the lead-up to the referendum, with women speaking publicly in unprecedented numbers about their abortion histories. These women storytellers were mirroring certain pro-choice movements in other contexts, where a new 'sound it loud, say it proud' narrative around abortion experiences has emerged as a central contemporary strategy for destigmatizing abortion discourse. Students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including law, gender studies, sociology, and human geography, will find this book of interest.

Family rhythms is the first textbook of its kind with an explicit focus on Ireland and Irish families. Uniquely, the book draws on original in-depth interviews with people of different ages to introduce contemporary scholarship on the family and to illustrate how Irish families have adapted and changed over time. With chapters on childhood, adolescence, parenting and grandparenthood, the book shows the resilience of families in different social and historical contexts. Each chapter includes a discussion of the challenges that face families and how social research can inform policy makers' responses. Family rhythms is a comprehensive, user-friendly textbook that offers a variety of strategies for engaging readers, including direct encounters with qualitative data through the use of classroom oriented discussion panels. Synopses of landmark Irish studies are included throughout, bringing the insights from these key studies together in a single textbook for the first time. -- .

Family rhythms is the first textbook of its kind with an explicit focus on Ireland and Irish families. Uniquely, the book draws on original in-depth interviews with people of different ages to introduce contemporary scholarship on the family and to illustrate how Irish families have adapted and changed over time. With chapters on childhood, adolescence, parenting and grandparenthood, the book shows the resilience of families in different social and historical contexts. Each chapter includes a discussion of the challenges that face families and how social research can inform policy makers' responses. Family rhythms is a comprehensive, user-friendly textbook that offers a variety of strategies for engaging readers, including direct encounters with qualitative data through the use of classroom oriented discussion panels. Synopses of landmark Irish studies are included throughout, bringing the insights from these key studies together in a single textbook for the first time. -- .

Between the years 1949 and 1976, Luther David Ralph (son, brother, husband, father, farmer, carpenter, storyteller, journalist) wrote over 800 columns entitled "Billy the Goat's Tales of Two Towns By L.D.R." for the GOODLETTSVILLE GAZETTE. In his first column he wrote, "This column will start in Shackle Island (TN) and eventually wind up in Goodlettsville (TN)......we will endeavor to mingle news of the past as handed down for posterity with amusing events of today." During those 27 years he did write about current events; memories of life on Long Hollow; stories of adventures in The West; and, occasionally family events. Mr. Ralph's reiminiscences and observations provide a glimpse into the life in rural Sumner County, Tennessee between the towns Goodlettsville (actually just over the line in Davidson County, TN) and Shackle Island along the Long Hollow he called home for the nine decades of his life (1890-1979). Granddaughter Annelle Ralph Hawkins Huggins has located many of the original columns saved by family members and readers over the years and additional ones in the holdings of the Tennessee State Library and Archives. She has chosen 91 representative columns for this compilation. Ms. Huggins has been an academic librarian for 41 years and currently serves as Associate Professor / Associate Dean of University Libraries at the University of Memphis. She continues to seek additional writings by her grandfather and to transcribe all findings into electronic format to be "handed down for posterity."