Rosa's Eyes tells the story of a family divided by empire, distance, and silence — and the two brothers who spent their lives trying to close that distance, without ever fully understanding why it existed.
Part One: The World That Broke Her
Charles
An Irish army surgeon stationed in the Ionian Islands. A marriage that crossed empires, religions, and everything the world of 1850s Kythera considered acceptable. Charles Bushe Hearn's choices set the family's course before either of his sons could speak — and the world he was part of eventually broke apart the family he made.
Part Two: The Face Above the Cradle
Rosa
Rosa Antoniou Cassimati is the woman at the center of this book, and the one history left almost no trace of. This part reconstructs her life, her marriage, and her separation from her children — and follows her to Corfu, where her story ends far from the sons who would spend their lives wondering about her.
Part Three: The Son Who Kept Reaching
Lafcadio
Lafcadio Hearn became a writer known around the world — but the through-line of his life was a mother he could barely remember, and a longing that shaped everything he wrote. This part traces that reaching: through his letters, his writing, and the fragments he held onto.
Part Four: The Son Who Kept Her Secret
James Daniel
While his brother's name became famous, James Daniel Hearn's story stayed close to home — and just as unresolved. This part tells the quieter half of the story: the brother who didn't leave, and what he carried without ever telling.
Why this book
I'm Rosa's great-great-grandson. James Daniel Hearn was my great-grandfather. Lafcadio Hearn — known in Japan as Koizumi Yakumo — was my great-grand-uncle. I didn't set out to write a family history. I set out to answer a question that had followed me for years: who was the woman both of these men spent their lives missing? Rosa's Eyes is what I found — and what I'm still finding.
Read a few pages from the book, or find out more about the research behind it.