We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It
A Memoir of My Irish Boyhood
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We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It
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Narrated by:
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Gerard Doyle
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By:
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Tom Phelan
About this listen
In the tradition of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and Alice Taylor’s To School Through the Fields, Tom Phelan’s We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It is a heartfelt and masterfully written memoir of growing up in Ireland in the 1940s.
Tom Phelan, who was born and raised in County Laois in the Irish Midlands, spent his formative years working with his wise and demanding father as he sought to wrest a livelihood from a farm that was often wet, muddy, and backbreaking.
It was a time before rural electrification, the telephone, and indoor plumbing; a time when the main modes of travel were bicycle and animal cart; a time when small farmers struggled to survive and turkey eggs were hatched in the kitchen cupboard; a time when the Church exerted enormous control over Ireland.
We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It recounts Tom’s upbringing in an isolated, rural community from the day he was delivered by the local midwife. With tears and laughter, it speaks to the strength of the human spirit in the face of life's adversities.
©2019 Tom Phelan (P)2019 Simon & SchusterListeners also enjoyed...
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National Velvet is a classic tale of dreams, ambition and one girl's belief in a horse. Velvet is mad about horses. When she wins a piebald horse in a raffle, she knows he's something special. His heart is as big as the five-foot fences he jumps, and he'll do anything for Velvet. Soon she and her friend, Mi, have their sights set on the biggest race in England. But can a girl win the Grand National?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Just wonderful
- By Shiloah Baker on 11-18-16
By: Enid Bagnold
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Coop
- A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting
- By: Michael Perry
- Narrated by: Michael Perry
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 227
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 210
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 209
Last seen sleeping off his wedding night in the back of a 1951 International Harvester pickup, Michael Perry is now living in a rickety Wisconsin farmhouse. Faced with 37 acres of fallen fences and overgrown fields, and informed by his pregnant wife that she intends to deliver their baby at home, Perry plumbs his unorthodox childhood - his city-bred parents took in more than 100 foster children while running a ramshackle dairy farm - for clues to how to proceed as a farmer, a husband, and a father.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Meh
- By dpenney on 12-22-16
By: Michael Perry
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The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 513
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 364
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Story4 out of 5 stars 362
The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
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The Long Valley
- By: John Steinbeck, John H. Timmerman - introduction
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 230
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 199
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 197
A Penguin Classic. First published in 1938, this volume of stories collected with the encouragement of his longtime editor Pascal Covici serves as a wonderful introduction to the work of Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. Set in the beautiful Salinas Valley of California, where simple people farm the land and struggle to find a place for themselves in the world, these stories reflect Steinbeck’s characteristic interests: The tensions between town and country, laborers and owners, past and present.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Generally Good Stories, Some are Great
- By Michael on 06-18-13
By: John Steinbeck, and others
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Elmet
- By: Fiona Mozley
- Narrated by: Gareth Bennett Ryan
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 538
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 500
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Story4 out of 5 stars 499
In this atmospheric and profoundly moving debut, Cathy and Daniel live with their father, John, in the remote woods of Yorkshire, in a house the three of them built themselves. John is a gentle brute of a man, a former enforcer who fights for money when he has to, but who otherwise just wants to be left alone to raise his children. When a local landowner shows up on their doorstep, their precarious existence is threatened, and a series of actions is set in motion that can only end in violence.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Strains credibility
- By DM on 01-06-18
By: Fiona Mozley
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Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
- An African Childhood
- By: Alexandra Fuller
- Narrated by: Lisette Lecat
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,109
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 794
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 790
Alexandra Fuller tells the idiosyncratic story of her life growing up white in rural Rhodesia as it was becoming Zimbabwe. The daughter of hardworking, yet strikingly unconventional English-bred immigrants, Alexandra arrives in Africa at the tender age of two. She moves through life with a hardy resilience, even as a bloody war approaches. Narrator Lisette Lecat reads this remarkable memoir of a family clinging to a harsh landscape and the dying tenets of colonialism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An African Childhood of Harrowing Proportions
- By Sara on 10-12-15
By: Alexandra Fuller
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Pearl in a Cage
- By: Joy Dettman
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 20 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
On a balmy midsummer's evening in 1923, a young woman - foreign, dishevelled and heavily pregnant - is found unconscious just off the railway tracks in the tiny logging community of Woody Creek. The town midwife, Gertrude Foote, is roused from her bed when the woman is brought to her door. Try as she might, Gertrude is unable to save her, but the baby lives.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Pearl in a Cage
- By Verita on 06-16-17
By: Joy Dettman
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The Red Pony
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 2 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 334
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 285
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Story4 out of 5 stars 286
Raised on a ranch in northern California, Jody is well-schooled in the hard work and demands of a rancher's life. He is used to the way of horses, too; but nothing has prepared him for the special connection he will forge with Gabilan, the hot-tempered pony his father gives him. With Billy Buck, the hired hand, Jody tends and trains his horse, restlessly anticipating the moment he will sit high upon Gabilan's saddle. But when Gabilan falls ill, Jody discovers there are still lessons he must learn about the ways of nature and, particularly, the ways of man.
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3 out of 5 stars
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About the narration
- By Elle on 05-03-12
By: John Steinbeck
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Long Lankin
- By: Lindsey Barraclough
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
When Cora and her little sister, Mimi, are sent to stay with their great-aunt in the isolated village of Bryers Guerdon, they receive a less than warm welcome and are desperate to go back to London. But Auntie Ida’s life was devastated the last time two young girls were at Guerdon Hall, and now her nieces’ arrival has reawakened an evil that has lain in wait for years. A haunting voice in an empty room; a strange, scarred man lurking in the graveyard; mysterious words scrawled on the walls of the abandoned church ... all point to a horrifying truth that has held Bryers Guerdon in its grip for centuries.
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5 out of 5 stars
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AMAZING!!!
- By Sharron on 09-06-14
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Medieval Woman
- Village Life in the Middle Ages
- By: Ann Baer
- Narrated by: Sarah Whitehouse
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 230
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 197
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 199
A history of peasants in the Middle Ages, the story takes the listener into the life of Marion, the carpenter's wife, and her extended family as they struggle to survive through hardship, featuring a year in their lives at the mercy of the weather and the Lord of the Manor. Existing without soap, paper or glass and only with the most basic of tools, we learn how they survive starvation, sickness, fire and natural disaster in their home on the edge of the Weald.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Listen to this on a cold dark night.
- By V on 03-07-19
By: Ann Baer
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An Unseemly Wife
- By: E. B. Moore
- Narrated by: Natalie Gold
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
Not all journeys come to an end.... 1867: Ruth Holtz has more blessings than she can count - a loving husband, an abundant farm, beautiful children, and the warm embrace of the Amish community. Then, the English arrive, spreading incredible stories of free land in the West and inspiring her husband to dream of a new life in Idaho. Breaking the rules of their Order, Ruth’s husband packs up his pregnant wife and their four children and joins a wagon train heading west.
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1 out of 5 stars
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disappointed
- By dave on 01-02-23
By: E. B. Moore
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The Grey Horse
- By: R. A. MacAvoy
- Narrated by: Steve Coulter
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 104
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 93
Set against the colorful and magical backdrop of Ireland, The Grey Horse chronicles a time when the Irish people suffered under harsh English overlords who sought to destroy their culture and way of life. Into the Irish town of Carraroe, a magnificent, completely grey stallion appears. The horse brings with him the promise of better times and magical happenings, for he is actually the shape-shifted form of Ruairi MacEibhir, journeyed to a time of danger in order to win the hand of the woman he loves.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A good enough irish tale
- By Ellenaeddy on 03-20-13
By: R. A. MacAvoy
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The Yorkshire Shepherdess
- By: Amanda Owen
- Narrated by: Anne Dover
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 66
Amanda Owen has been seen by millions on ITV's The Dales, living a life that has almost gone in today's modern world, a life ruled by the seasons and her animals. She is a farmer's wife and shepherdess, living alongside her husband, Clive, and seven children at Ravenseat, a 2,000 acre sheep hill farm at the head of Swaledale in North Yorkshire. It's a challenging life but one she loves.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I want to go and have cream tea and meet all the animals and the shepherdess herself
- By luvs aussies on 05-30-19
By: Amanda Owen
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The Good Thief
- By: Hannah Tinti
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 156
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 94
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Story4 out of 5 stars 96
Twelve-year-old Ren doesn't know who his parents were. He doesn't know who left him at St. Anthony's orphanage, or how he lost his left hand when still an infant. He is resigned to life without a family to call his own and terrified of the future. But then a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be Ren's long-lost brother, and his convincing tale of how Ren lost his hand and his parents is enough to persuade the monks at the orphanage to release the boy. But is Benjamin really who he says he is?
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3 out of 5 stars
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Close But No Cigar?
- By Andrew Moore on 10-03-09
By: Hannah Tinti
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Justin Morgan Had a Horse
- By: Marguerite Henry
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 3 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 51
In the early years of our country, a poor school teacher, Justin Morgan, receives a horse and her tiny colt in payment for some work. He wishes he had been given money instead. Hoping that he might sell both horses for a fair price, he asks his student, Joel, to break in the colt. To his surprise, young Joel soon discovers that this small, brown creature has special abilities: "Bub" can pull more than a team of oxen, and he can run faster than a racehorse.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Loved Classic
- By E. on 10-14-15
By: Marguerite Henry
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Father and I Were Ranchers
- Little Britches # 1
- By: Ralph Moody
- Narrated by: Cameron Beierle
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,959
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,608
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1,609
The Moody family moves from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Experience the pleasures and perils of ranching in 20th Century America, through the eyes of a youngster.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Very dissappointed , too much cussing.
- By Lovelessnomore on 05-29-15
By: Ralph Moody
What listeners say about We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- danielle
- 12-13-19
Warning: you'll laugh and cry
Excellent writing. Beautiful story. Lovely reading. We laughed until the last chapter and epilogue, when we cried.
Worth every penny.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- CFitzRN
- 02-05-23
Thoroughly enjoyable, quintessentially Irish
A wonderful memoir narrated perfectly. A retelling of the life of an Irish farmer's son dotted with great humor, at times uproariously hilarious, and other times deeply moving. One is able to visualize each story in vivid detail while listening to this most talented narrator, whose various voices depict each character with perfect aplomb. I only wish I could listen again for the first time.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Bernie LaRiviere
- 01-21-23
Great book and narration
I love the narrators voice, he makes it feel like your in the book too.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Bijoux
- 11-04-23
Very enjoyable
Lovely story. Glimpse into a time passed and soon to be forgotten as people die off. It was a totally different world. Record stories of your grandparents.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Lunatic Fringe
- 07-11-23
LOVED IT !!
I've Listened to this book Over and over again !! its a Very Good !! a great story
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Wimblie
- 01-04-23
Very cute, fun to hear.
Really neat book, loved hearing it. Not overly exciting but great stories worth hearing. Nice to know about times in the past and hear how people lived.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 09-04-23
funny
i found myself laughing much. and brought back memories of my dad and gma. excellant funny stories.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Johan Rodriguez
- 01-05-23
Great story
Loved this book. Thoroughly enjoyed the Irish vocabulary. Definitely reminds you of how easy we have it these days and the harder issues that people had to face back then on rural farms. Characters were well developed- moments of hilarity and sadness, truly enjoyed listening to this bit of history!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Kathleen Gerard
- 02-11-23
So good!
Poignant , real and rich! I loved hearing about life on an Irish farm in the 50s I loved hearing about how his father and mother never showed outward displays of affection, but how the author understood how much they loved each other by the fact that every night after dinner, his father would get up and wash the dishes, while his mother sat by the fire and read the paper… And so much more
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Kindle Customer
- 08-25-21
I love this book
I thoroughly enjoyed the book and the voice performance. The farm and people came to life! Can't recommend it enough!
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