About Maureen
Maureen Wlodarczyk is an author, columnist and genealogist writing about historical people and events. Her two historical non-fiction books are:
Past-Forward: A Three-Decade and Three-Thousand-Mile Journey Home – the story of the search for her Irish family roots and the discovery of humble roots in the remote West of Ireland, the struggle to survive and the flight to America to escape the potato famine of the 1840s and the next 75 years as multiple generations find their way as Americans.
Young & Wicked: The Death of a Wayward Girl- is the true story of first generation Irish-Americans William Flannelly and his girl Polly Sexton. Born into poverty and growing up on the gritty streets of Lower Manhattan and Jersey City in the 1880s, this lesser Bonnie & Clyde took the wrong path early on, as child criminals, and continued down the slippery slope of petty criminality and anti-social behavior first as individuals and then as a star-crossed couple. They fled their homes in Jersey City to avoid arrest and with the intention of disappearing into the shadows and fast times of the 1890s Bowery neighborhood in Manhattan. In the end, they not only disappeared, they lost themselves, one in body and the other in soul.
Maureen is also a columnist for the River View Observer newspaper and a member of the Irish American Writers and Artists group. Past-Forward and Young & Wicked can be purchased at www.past-forward.com. Read Maureen’s blog “Post-Scripts” at www.past-forward.com/blog .
