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Author Barbara T. Cerny grew up in Grand Junction, Colorado, which at that time was a small town of 30,000 people. She left that little burg to see the world, garner three college degrees, and to serve in the US Army. After eight years on active duty and fourteen years in the reserves, she retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2007. While deployed to the Middle East in 2005, Ms. Cerny finally figured out she had to get going on the real love of her life, writing. She wrote her first two novels during that time and hasn’t stopped. She is presently working on novels number seven, eight, and nine. When not writing, Ms. Cerny works as an information technology specialist and supervisor for the US Air Force. She lives with her loving husband, their two active teenagers, and three needy cats. The cats patiently watch her write and listen to her intently as she discusses plot lines with them.
Reviewed by Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers' Favorite
Life is a journey. It has its ups and downs. For Tressa O’Daire, master baker in Dublin, soon to be wed to the handsome bricklayer, Séamus Bannon, little did she know that life would have so many downs and such a long journey, far from home, before things would start to look up for her. It took a lot of courage and the will to protect her unborn child to force her decision to leave her home and family and cross the Atlantic to start a new life in New York, a life where she hoped that one day she would be able to have her own business, her own bakery.
Barbara T. Cerny’s novel, Tressa, is a compassionate tale of love, hardship and both the horrors and the joys of life itself. Set initially in the early years of the nineteenth century in Dublin, Ireland, the story moves across the ocean to New York where the lives of many were just as difficult as they had been in the country they left behind. From a master baker to a nursemaid and then a baker again, Tressa saw the wide extremes of good and evil, not just in the people around her, but also in life itself. Her character glows through the pages of this story, her strong personality and courage growing with each new challenge, each new experience.
The reader is pulled directly into the story to follow the plot as it leads this wonderful, passionate woman, an amazing baker and a caring individual, through trials and hardships and so much more. With clever and accurate insight into the lives of women in this era, the author has created a powerful story about the working class that equals the intensity of many Catherine Cookson novels. A great read and a thrilling plot.
