The life of Beatrice Desmond (a.k.a. Chicago May) does not appear in biographical dictionaries or collections about notable Irish-American women. At the age of 19, Desmond had already squandered her claims to such honors by stealing her rural family's savings and running away to the U.S. There she began a criminal career of astonishing versatility; by turns, she was a grifter, a blackmailer, a street prostitute, a pickpocket, a thief, a shoplifter, a bank robber, and a high-class call girl. The media of the time fastened on her as "the Queen of the Underworld," but her fame dwindled posthumously. Now acclaimed memoirist Nuala O'Faolain recovers this colorful maverick of the Old Sod as only she could.
Publishers Weekly
In 1890, 19-year-old May Duignan left her hardscrabble Irish town with her family's savings and set off to create a new life. In a biography that is also a reflection on autobiography, O'Faolain, author of two bestselling memoirs, examines the young woman's transformation into the notorious thief and prostitute Chicago May. Her greatest source is May's own account of her life, which, in significant contrast to modern memoir, is long on action and short on reflection. O'Faolain balances that deficit with smart readings of scattered sources and with evocations of her own life that illuminate the Irish experience in May's time and today. She follows May through the desperate and tough Chicago red light district to the Tenderloin of New York, and then to London, Paris and various prisons. May's opportunities for escape from the life she made came in many forms, including marriage to the black sheep of a respectable New Jersey family and a successful escape with the loot from a heist of the American Express office in Paris. But shortsightedness, loyalty and revenge led her to rebuff each opportunity. While drawing out the lacunae of her story with speculation and description, O'Faolain resists the urge to reinvent or sentimentalize May. The biographer makes herself a complement rather than an intrusion, and May emerges lively, unique and cut from the cloth of Irish and American reinvention. B&w photos not seen by PW. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Though unknown to many today, Irishwoman Mary Ann (May) Duignan (1871-1929) was notorious in her time. Here she is brought vividly to life by best-selling author O'Faolain (Are You Somebody?). O'Faolain moves briskly through the story of May Duignan, who at age 19 stole her parents' life savings, left rural Ireland, and embarked upon a life of scandal and crime on both sides of the Atlantic, earning the nickname "Chicago May." Her exploits took her through high and low society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and brought her international attention from the press. O'Faolain's chief source is Duigan's autobiography, but she writes as much about her own journey in search of a deeper understanding of May's motivations and inner life. She takes great care to present her subject's story without judgment, with May not an evil person but someone who did what she could to survive. O'Faolain provides insights into the lives of single immigrant women of May's generation and offers suggestions as to why so many were driven to lives of crime. Chicago May often reads like a novel and, unfortunately, has no bibliography, endnotes, or index. This is a shame, as O'Faolain clearly put a great deal of time and effort into the research for this book. It is an exciting read that is highly recommended for all larger public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/05.]-Gena Moore, Central Piedmont Community Coll. Lib., Charlotte, NC Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
O'Faolain, mistress of the memoir (Almost There, 2003, etc.), meets her match in fellow Irishwoman Chicago May, feisty turn-of-the-century feminist and queen of crooks. O'Faolain's biography of May Duignan, who fled County Longford, Ireland, for New York in 1890, is as much about the author, her beleaguered Irish clan and the tribulations of Irish emigration as it is about her notorious subject. O'Faolain manages to weave the destiny of an entire people into the flight of auburn-haired, buxom 19-year-old May, from her impoverished home in Edenmore, as her mother was delivering yet another baby the family could ill afford to raise. May fled with the family's savings; the fugitive booked cabin class to New York, rather than steerage, in the first of her devil-may-care acts that would come to characterize her in the new world. From Nebraska, where she supposedly had an uncle, to cities teeming with vice such as Chicago and New York, as well as cities overseas, she capitalized on her good looks by learning quickly how to make a sucker of an admirer, and soon excelled as a "badger" in luring men into rooms where they would be fleeced. Flush from her prostitution earnings, ruthless May-"the tart who could bite diamonds out of tie-pins"-fell in with safe-cracker Eddie Guerin, and their American Express heist in Paris proved her eventual downfall. O'Faolain quotes extensively from May's end-of-life, picaresque 1928 autobiography, Chicago May, Her Story, which the author found in the New York Public Library. Employing her own autobiographical skills and intimacy with Irish sob stories (see Are You Somebody?, 1998), O'Faolain speculates endlessly on May's motivation and intention, tracking years ofbrutal incarceration, fly-by-night grifting and illness, ending in May's heartbreaking "disillusion with the act of autobiography itself." A biography with narrative muscle and thrilling historical relevance.
