Although he never said as much, I knew my da loved me. By contrast, I knew Ma did not. She doted on my sister, Nora, while she treated me as an afterthought at best and a burden at worst.

“By the sacred heart of Mary,” she often said, “sure, I don’t know what sin from the past has brought the scourge of yourself into my life.”

My stutter did not help my situation. It developed soon after I began to speak and persisted over the years. It was worse when I was nervous, and particularly pronounced when Ma was shouting at me. I tried everything I could to suppress it, with no success. After a while I realized all I could do was limit the amount of talking I did.

As the years passed, I took refuge in books. The local schoolmistress, Miss Fagan, a young woman from Belfast, took a liking to me and brought books to me from the library in Donegal Town. “You’re a clever girl, Delia,” she said, “you deserve more of an education than this wee school can give you.” I was delighted with the books. They became my friends and my comfort on long winter evenings when the wind whistled through the window and rain pounded the roof. I would sit on my small bed in the stark attic holding a candle and devouring the pages one by one.

Over time, my dreams of outward rebellion were replaced with something more subtle. I came to find joy in the new words I was learning from my books—not just the joy of new knowledge gained, but joy in the notion that it was setting me apart from the rest of my family. Slowly, the word “imposter” began to take on a new and positive meaning. The books I loved best were the ones in which the people in them sailed away to foreign places in search of adventure, discovery and, sometimes, love. On fine days, I used to sit amid my rocks and stare out over the distant Atlantic, lost in visions of lush jungles, hot deserts, sea-swept islands and teeming cities that surely lay beyond it. Such places were a far cry from my little Donegal village, and even farther from my miserable home, and I longed to see them.

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