Author Description

Just Like Me tells the story of the Toomey family from rural County Cork, Ireland. It follows the youngest child Ned and his sister Mary who are forced to leave Ireland and the family they love at the start of the great famine in 1845. To save his sister from indentured servitude, Ned joins the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War.As a new American, Ned is anxious to serve the cause of freedom that has long been denied Catholics in Ireland. Ned performs his duty with honor in spite of the injustices he sees around him.Traveling with the army into Mexico, Ned realizes that the peasants he sees suffer the same injustice that the Catholics in Ireland suffered at the hands of the English. Clearly the native Mexicans he is fighting are "Just Like Me" and he is forced to choose between his oath of allegiance to the new country and the love of his fellow man as taught by the religion he embraces.