Author's Note- Well, in History class, we've been studying the Industrial Revolution. I find the story of the Irish immigrants fascinating. ^_^ Inspired! I came up with this out of nowhere, really. Nobody's really written about the Irish immigrants yet, so I'm going to take my chances with it.

This prologue thing starts out in Ireland, in 1845, when the Irish Potato Famine started.

^_^ My first Historical Fiction piece, so be nice. Enjoy!

There's Still Hope Yet

By Eriko Myoujin

Nobody really saw it coming. I don't know how God expected us to deal with it.

It was strange, watching the potato crop grow black over a period of days. At first I didn't think it was much of a problem. I'd never seen such a thing, of course, but I didn't pay it much mind.

The potato crops were rotting. The farmers knew, but didn't tell us. I hated them for that. Perhaps if we'd gotten a fair warning we could have had some sort of chance… no, no. There was nothing neither they nor we could do. The potatoes rotted, not just in our village, but all over Ireland.

In some villages, they didn't realize the problem, and ate the potatoes without realizing what was wrong. I heard stories of entire villages being overcome with sudden sickness; people dying overnight of cholera and typhus…

My family and village didn't suffer that way. After the first round of effects of the potato rot hit, more problems surfaced. For one, there were certainly not enough potatoes to feed the entire country, and, being that potatoes were the staples of almost every Irishman's diet, famine struck.

The prices for potatoes soared so that only the richest of all the men in Ireland could buy them. Unfortunately, my family and I were not such.

We'd had a few pounds of potatoes stored in the cellar, but they did not last long. Soon, not only my family but the entire village was overwhelmed by famine.

People died all around me. Friends, people I'd known for all of my fifteen-year life…. Coffins were no longer bought, for people were saving their money for food. Instead, my friends and cousins were thrown into a giant hole outside of town- the Dead Hole, they called it.

How did I happen to fare so well? I was never really sure… for a while, I assumed that my family was having the best of luck. Then my father died.

He'd always been a sickly man. Too weak to work in the potato fields, too weak to pull the water from the well… however, I never saw it coming. He was struck down during the night. I was awakened that morning by my mother's screams and sobs; she tried so hard to wake him…

My little brother Ryan took it the hardest. He didn't speak for weeks, and was constantly crying off by himself.

For a while I began to think that everything was hopeless. We were all going to die; it wasn't even worth trying anymore… I was so hungry by then I could barely walk without falling over from weakness.

But there was still hope yet… much hope, in fact.