The Ladies of Madison Manor: A Fictionalized Memoir Celebrating Chicago in the 1940s

Meet The Ladies of Madison Manor. Their leader, Tess O’Leary, always has the last word. Traffic screeches to a halt when she out-stretches her white-gloved hands and crosses Madison Street, like Moses parting the Red Sea. Tess is really old, born the day before God, so she can tell him how to run the universe. Joining her is Nell Fogarty, whose energy gobbles up people, news, and events. Nell believes in the Gospel of Hard Work for others. Her most strenuous act is setting down a glass of Jameson whiskey in her diamond-heavy hand to pick up the daily racing form. The third member of the trio, Mary Clare Mulvihill, has one foot on the planet, the other in the galaxies. She’s the manor’s resident mystic, busy shooting off rockets in the back yard. Peggyann Ryan brings these characters alive though the eyes of a fourteen-year-old girl struggling to find her way in the Irish society of 1940’s West Side Chicago.