Past-Forward: A Three-Decade and Three-Thousand-Mile Journey Home

"Past-Forward" is the non-fiction account of author Maureen K. Wlodarczyk’s thirty-year search for her grandmother’s Irish ancestral roots. The book, written in the form of a letter to Maureen’s grandmother Kate, tells both the story of the thirty-year search itself along with the discovered tale of Kate’s Irish ancestors from the late eighteenth century in the West of Ireland, to their emigration to America in the mid-nineteenth century fleeing the devastating potato famine and through the next eight decades in Jersey City, New Jersey as successive generations struggled to make their way despite hardship and tragedy. The Genealogical Society of New Jersey reviewed “Past-Forward” saying the book is “an excellent example of taking genealogy far beyond just names and dates….valuable to anyone who has an interest in the journey of seeking their ancestors.”