It all started with the potatoes. None of us could ever forget the day Father, Aedan, and Coilin started digging them up from the ground. All black and inedible. At the time, I was too young to understand exactly what had happened, but I could feel that something bad was occurring.

I could hear the whispers between Mother and Father before meals, and I noticed the portions becoming smaller and smaller. In a relatively poor household of ten, I was no stranger to hunger, but that winter was nothing like what I had ever experienced before. We went to bed hungry every night, and every day it got worse.

Grandma died in January. She was old, and there was nothing we could do. Within a month of her death, my parents couldn't pay the rent anymore, so our merciless landlord threw us out of the house. With the little money we had left, my parents bought the entire family passage to America.

The journey to America took four long weeks. Mother, Father, my older brothers, Aedan and Colin, my older sisters, Ana and Briana, my younger brothers, Patrick and Liam, and I were all cramped with many other passengers into the small space of the lower deck of the ship. Many of the other people were referring to the large boat as a "coffin ship", and I could understand why.

After a few days Coilin fell terribly ill. By the end of the week, we tossed his limp, lifeless body overboard to rest with the fish at the bottom of the ocean. Mother was devastated. We couldn't even give him a proper funeral.

We were relieved when we finally made it to New York after the fourth painful week on the voyage.

When we finally stepped off the boat into the streets of New York, we met a funny man named Nicholas. He told Mother and Father that he would help them find a place to live in the chaotic mess that was this new country.

He led us to a large building with many people in it. Mother and Father seemed disappointed with the price, but because it was the only option, they decided that we would live there. There were lots of other people, many also Irish immigrants.

The next few months were hard on our family. I spent my time taking care of Liam, Patrick, and other young children in the house we were living in, while my siblings and parents went to work. Father and Aedan found jobs at the port, while Mother went to work in a factory that made cloth. Ana went to work and live with a wealthy couple as their maid, and Briana became a prostitute.