A corset of pink Jaquard silk trimmed with pink plush encicles Norah McCabe's small waist as she strides delicately through the squalor of Five Points, New York. A rotting horse carcass, odors emanating from a heap of animal entrails outside a butcher shop, a clam seller's raucous cries, and a rag picker's greedy hands clutching for a piece of her yellow silk dress embossed with elaborate brown velvet, does not deter Norah. She is on her way...on her way to success. Norah McCabe defies the roles and limitations of her race and gender, throwing off the washer woman domestic's apron to become someone as worthy as any Yankee Protestant woman. She tenaciously spins her sorrows into gold while the threads of her life shred, break, and become lost in the fabric of the complex, mysterious creature of pre-Civil War New York City.

"'The Irish Dresser' is a powerful look at the Great Hunger....Neale fleshes out the bones of history with the experiences of one family, one young girl..." (Rebecca Rule)

"The Irish Dresser is an exciting, entertaining, and highly recommended story of taking risks and facing new challenges for the sake of hope." (Midwest Book Review)

"To forget the hunger, 13-year-old Nora McCabe hides in her family's big dresser and daydreams about food and a richer life...she stows away in it for a long journey filled with sickness, hunger, and unfair treatment of the poor.  In addition to the gripping plot, the story is told in the cadences of Irish speech." (Washington Parent)