Clare Broise is currently the forty-first century’s foremost and most prolific author of children’s books. But her title is not a name but rather a misnomer. As the writer of more than seventy novels for adults, as well as a host of books for children, Broise has no title to her credit, and her books are numbered either with her name or with her publication year. Her very first novel, A Beka Year, was published posthumously, so she never actually wrote the book; though she was the one who designed the cover and the interior pages.
If you were to look at Broise’s career as a whole, you would find that it spans a full span of more than three centuries, and that she has moved through everything from an army officer to a schoolteacher and finally into a career as a writer. She has lived through three eras of a national identity in Ireland, and throughout these three phases, she has achieved heights of success only matched by some of her contemporaries. Clare Broise has never shirked from a challenge, and if there ever was a time for a woman with such ambition and drive to pursue a career as a novelist, that time is now. She is today one of the most popular and widely read writers of our time.
In A Beka Year, Broise was able to bring together her experiences as a young woman from a very young age and her reflections on those same years in life as an older woman. All of this has resulted in some truly memorable stories, some touching novels, and many touching memoirs of the kind that make you want to hear more about what happened to Broise as she gathered the courage to accept a challenge of this magnitude. And yet, beyond these well-written stories are those moments when you think, “That girl has been through a lot more than I have.” These are the stories that give you a glimpse of a lifetime of experience and beauty and help you appreciate that Broise has lived a long and satisfying career in the midst of much hardship and loss.