Deborah Tall

A memoir of the five years the author lived on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland in the 1970's. A book about a remarkable place -- its beauties and hardships -- and the lively people who define it.

"Few of us have the chance to realize a dream. For Deborah Tall chance took the shape of a wild Celtic professor who whisked her off to find passion and her poetic self on a barely inhabited lump of rock just off the west coast of Ireland. THE ISLAND OF THE WHITE COW tells us the story of that time and of the lives that Miss Tall, her lover and the islanders made for themselves on its rocky and inhospitable shores."
--New York Times Book Review

"The island was lucky to have had someone as perceptive and articulate as Deborah Tall as an accidental inhabitant. Her account of 'loving an unlovable place,' as she puts it, is pure light."
--Alastair Reid

"Deborah Tall's book is admirable as a calendar of island life, but it is also a well-earned account of the growth of her poet's mind. Without self-absorption, she traces the self's emergence in a place which she recognized from the start as her testing place." --Seamus Heaney

"Fascinating and very touching . . . a warm and loving look at a vanishing way of life." --Washington Post

"A convincing and moving history of the human heart . . . told with fresh energy and genuine artistry." --Newsday