The Irish Connection and Other Stories is a collection, each short story self-contained, yet interconnected and focused on the “Irish” experience. Michael Mulligan flees the famine with the wife of a tyrannical Anglo Irish landlord; over a century and a half later, Declan Mulligan researches the legacy of his mysterious great great grandfather, the same Michael Mulligan: cavalry officer at Gettysburg, secret assassin and theatre producer. Between these bookends appear other stories: two sisters survive the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, a young black woman goes to Ireland to find her Irish roots, a promising woman writer faces cancer, and an ailing retired Jewish lawyer has a magical moment on the Aran Islands.
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More About the Author
I was born in San Francisco and received an MA in creative writing from San Francisco State. I've been actively involved in theatre, and worked with several theatre and film artists, including Sam Shepard and Peter Coyote. I attended the American Film Institute to study screenwritng. I've worked as a teacher of speech communications and English. I have published six books, and currently, four of them are available through Kindle. I have written extensively about the Irish American experience, and received a Pushcart Prize nomination for the story, "Free Fall." I am also a folk-blues enthusiast and play acoustic guitar. The arts publication, The Scream Online, is currently running stories from my book, These Precious Hours, in serial form.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful portrait of the Irish,
By
This review is from: The Irish Connection and Other Stories (Paperback)
Michael Corrigan channels his Irish roots with a poignant honesty. The historically accurate settings and details, as well as the true dialects and idioms of his Irish ancestors, allow Corrigan's lyrical voice to transport us back to the eveyday pains and joys of those days.
His stories are like a proper pint of Guinness, to be shared round the table amongst friends and strangers soon to be friends, each tale savoured in the sharing but the head jealously guarded as one's own piece of pleasure.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interconnected short stories, beautifully written,
By
This review is from: The Irish Connection and Other Stories (Paperback)
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.
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