The Irish Connection and Other Stories

Rating:
Summary: Interconnected short stories, beautifully written
Review: In Michael Corrigan's first book, Confessions of a Shanty Irishman, he shared the experience of growing up an Irish Catholic in San Francisco. This second book takes his memoir one step further through fiction that has the clear ring of truth. Anyone of Irish ancestry, or those interested in things Irish, should relish this book of strong characters living through the pivotal times of two centuries in Ireland and America.

Of particular interest to me was Michael Mulligan. Several of the stories feature Mulligan and his ancestors. In 1847, Michael Mulligan is a fine, young figure of a man, a stable groom who escapes Ireland with Maria Burke who is married to a cruel English landowner. The ship they take to America is infested with typhus. Maria dies, leaving Mulligan alone to seek his fortune in San Francisco. He is a fascinating figure, strong willed and intelligent. When he meets his son John in 1888 at the Gettysburg battlefield, their relationship is strained. The elder Mulligan had gone to war when John Mulligan was young, and must explain his failure to return. The author sympathetically follows the Mulligans as each generation investigates their Irish roots.

Corrigan skillfully captures important aspects of Irish and American history. Ireland's plague and famine. The American Civil War. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906. World War Two. The Berlin crisis. The Civil Rights Movement. And that awful decade of political assassinations that devastated America. We see history through the eyes of Corrigan's intriguing characters. The Mulligans, Kennedys and O'Learys. Sean Dineen, Gingles O'Malley, and others.

The heart and spirit of each character and their time resonates through Corrigan's pristine prose. Moments of love, beauty, joy, and sorrow shine in these twenty stories of strong and courageous people.