Author's debut novel has roots in central Mayo home

THERE’S a cottage in Brownhill, Ballyvary, that was built by Andy and Lena McDonnell in 1955. In that home they raised their five children.

While they moved across to England for work years later, the house remained. Those five children brought their children to stay at Brownhill in the summer holidays, and the house remains with the family today.

One of those grandchildren is Lynsey McDonnell, whose family emigrated to Australia in 1990, but it still wasn’t far enough to leave Brownhill behind, because those grandparents and that little house in Brownhill left a big enough imprint to turn up in Lynsey’s debut novel, releasing in July this year.

Bailey Street is a sweeping dual-timeline story inspired by real events, meticulous historical research and one enduring question: what stories are hidden in the places we think we know?

Set between present-day County Mayo and Liverpool, and Western Australia in the late 19th century, Bailey Street weaves together a contemporary search for identity with a forbidden love story linked to Irish revolutionary, convict and poet John Boyle O’Reilly.

“I’d always been fascinated by a small cottage tucked into Fremantle Port, a place that refused to give way as the busy port grew around it,” says Lynsey of the inspiration behind the home that is the book’s namesake and the setting that connects past and present in the story.

That same fascination led Lynsey searching for more after reading a 2018 article about the 150th anniversary of the last convict ship into Western Australia.

This is how she found the story of O’Reilly - one of the Fenian prisoners transported to WA - and a rumoured relationship history had largely overlooked.

“What began as a spark of curiosity quickly became years of research,” she says. “I wanted to understand not just what happened, but the constraints, the risks and the choices people made in a very different time.”

The novel is also shaped by Lynsey’s own story. Born in the UK to Irish parents and raised in the north of England before migrating to Western Australia as a teenager, her work explores themes of belonging, identity and what it means to feel at home across countries and generations.

Drawing on archival records, first-hand accounts and a deep connection to her Irish heritage including family ties to Mayo, Lynsey blends fact and fiction to reimagine a love story shaped by passion, secrecy and circumstance.

“I wanted to write the kind of story I love to read, one with heart, where the characters stay with you long after the final page.”

A chartered accountant and chief financial officer in the not-for-profit sector, Lynsey brings a unique perspective to her writing, balancing a long professional career with a lifelong passion for stories. She is also a graduate of the Curtis Brown Creative Write Your Novel course and a recipient of a Katherine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre Fellowship.

Bailey Street will appeal to readers of historical fiction, and book club favourites, particularly those drawn to stories that explore love, legacy and the ties that connect us across time and place.

Published by Hawkeye Publishing, Bailey Street will be released on July 23. It will be available at Castle Books, Castlebar.