Book Review: Mithim: An Entrancing Historical Debut Novel set in 17th Century Ireland by Carina McNally

 

*Editorial Book Review*

MITHIM 

An Entrancing Historical Debut Novel set in 17th Century Ireland 

by Carina McNally 

Publication Date: 15th May 2026
Publisher: The Mercier Press
Page Length: 284
Genre: Historical Fiction 

It is 1657 in the heart of Wexford, and the fires of conquest have reduced Killenea Castle to rubble.

Mithim McMurrough, the daughter of a fallen Gaelic lord, survives alone in the deep forests where the enemy dares not tread.

Stripped of her noble title and her family, she holds onto the forgotten ways of her ancestors, blending into the wild to escape capture.

As an unsung Irish healer, she risks her life daily to cure the desperate villagers who brave the woods in search of salvation, drawing on herbal medicine and the old Gaelic traditions passed down through generations of wise women before her.

I did not have to atone for not being a good daughter, sister, girlfriend. The realisation is a freedom for me.

There are losses that alter a life so completely that it becomes difficult to imagine who we might have been without them. For Mithim McMurrough, the destruction of her family’s home and the disappearance of those she loves have left her with little beyond her knowledge of healing and the forest in which she has taken refuge. In ‘Mithim’, Carina McNally follows a woman who has survived the violence of seventeenth-century Ireland, but has yet to discover how to live beyond it.

The novel opens in 1649 with an attack on Killenea Castle. Mithim wakes to the screams of her father’s hawks and finds her home engulfed in violence. It is a brutal beginning, particularly because the castle has represented security throughout her childhood. I found the image of the hawks escaping their burning tethers especially striking. Their freedom comes at the very moment Mithim loses the life she has known, and birds continue to accompany her thoughts throughout the novel.

Years later, Mithim lives alone in the Wexford forest, treating those who seek her out with remedies drawn from the plants around her. Her knowledge allows her to survive, but her cabin also shelters her from questions she cannot bear to answer. She does not know what became of her brother, Eoin, or Neachtain, the man she loved. There is something particularly painful about that uncertainty. She mourns their absence, but without knowing their fate, she cannot entirely surrender the hope that they might return.

Mithim is proud, resourceful and sometimes extraordinarily difficult. She cares about the suffering of her patients, yet can react sharply when they touch upon her own wounds. She resents the assumptions made about her while making quite a few assumptions of her own. I found her most interesting when those contradictions became apparent. Her former position matters to her more than she sometimes admits, and her indignation at being treated as a servant can sit rather uncomfortably beside her opinion of other servants.

Her memories of her father, Fiach, are equally complicated. He represents the family and home she has lost, but he also restricted the future she wanted for herself. He opposed her relationship with Neachtain and expected marriage and motherhood to take precedence over further training as a healer. Mithim remembers rare moments of kindness alongside his anger and restrictions, and I appreciated that longing for her former home does not mean she remembers an entirely happy childhood.

The natural world is the strongest aspect of this novel. McNally writes with close attention to woodland, shore and changing seasons, and Mithim’s understanding of plants shapes almost every part of her life. A tree can offer protection, a flower recall someone she loved, and an ordinary household object carry the memory of hands that once held it. I particularly enjoyed the contrast between the forest and the towns, where noise, waste and crowded streets make Mithim feel painfully exposed.

Irish folklore and older spiritual beliefs are central to her understanding of these surroundings. Her devotion to the Cailleach Bere connects her with her mother’s people, while her healing knowledge gives her a means of preserving something that war has failed to take away. The seasonal chapter headings reinforce that connection. I did occasionally find the detailed plant lore interrupted the action, but it also made clear how thoroughly Mithim’s work and beliefs belong to the same life.

Leaving the forest brings her into relationships that are considerably harder to understand than the plants she knows so well. Diarmuid offers assistance, but his interest in her is not easy to read. His wife, Deirdre, is an unsettling presence whose apparent vulnerability does little to diminish her capacity for cruelty. Mithim’s efforts to decide whom she can trust provide much of the tension, particularly when accepting protection means surrendering some of her independence.

Among the supporting characters, I particularly liked Beibhinn. She understands the world Mithim has lost, but she also has children to feed and cannot afford to live entirely within its memory. Their friendship includes affection, irritation and differences that neither can simply wish away. Beibhinn’s insistence that they must pass their knowledge to another generation gives Mithim something important to consider beyond finding the people she misses.

I did have reservations about the repetition. Conversations frequently return to lost land, religious oppression, the wisdom of nature and Mithim’s distrust of others. These concerns are essential to the story, but their repeated discussion sometimes slows its progress. Several revelations also arrive through lengthy explanations, and I would have welcomed more room to absorb them. Nevertheless, I remained interested in how Mithim would respond, even when her impulsiveness made me wish she would pause before speaking.

McNally makes clear in the historical note that the rogue army’s advance south in the opening is fictional. The novel places its imagined characters within the devastation of conquest and dispossession, making those upheavals personal through the loss of homes, livelihoods and family connections. For Mithim, survival means deciding what she can carry forward when returning to her former life is impossible.

‘Mithim’ is an atmospheric and often painful story of displacement, betrayal and the search for belonging. What stayed with me most was Mithim’s growing recognition that her future needs more than answers about the past. Her knowledge has kept her alive; deciding what to do with it may finally give her a reason to look ahead.

Review by Mary Anne Yarde

The Coffee Pot Book Club

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Carina McNally

Carina McNally is a freelance journalist, playwright, historian and tour guide based on the Beara Peninsula, Co. Cork. Her short stories have appeared in Cyphers Literary Magazine and Woman’s Way. Mithim is her debut historical novel.

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