"Is there any life that Russell Working cannot imagine? In these powerful, haunting stories, he explores the private lives of Egyptian adolescent girls, a North Korean woman sold to a Chinese farmer, a Russian doctor whose child has been stolen—victims of every time and place, always with singular compassion. Outrage for the world's lost and needy fuels
The Irish Martyr, and intelligence and deep love imbue every sentence. This book looks at hard truths, and they will linger in the thoughts of its readers." —Erin McGraw, author of
The Good Life "If Flannery O'Connor had lived to read The Irish Martyr, she would have written Russell Working a letter of appreciation. These stories are instructive and fascinating." —David Huddle, author of The Story of a Million Years and La Tour Dreams of the Wolf Girl
"In The Irish Martyr, Russell Working bravely navigates a labyrinthine maze of politics and culture to bring us a searing look at our troubled world. "Slava," the long final story in the collection, is a particularly moving account of ethnic hatred and the terrible violence it spawns. If you're not moved by this story, you should have your heart checked to make sure you still have one." —Ed Falco, author of Acid and In the Park of Culture
"The Irish Martyr is a powerful, brave, and dangerous book that takes us to the borderlands where religion and geopolitics rip apart the lives of ordinary people. These are stories about torture, decapitation, rape, kidnapping, and trafficking in women and babies. They are about men and women caught in the meat-grinder of history, caught between trying to survive as human beings and the vicious tools of dogma, ideology, and greed. Russell Working knows the dark corners of the world, he knows the personal underside of the news stories we have become all too accustomed to seeing on our TV screens. He writes straight from the heart, with a moral indignation that is palpable." —Douglas Glover, author of Elle and The Enamoured Knight
"Ranging over more of the world and more extreme experience than his readers are likely to know, former foreign correspondent Russell Working sets private dramas against historical events and geopolitical dilemmas. China, the Middle East, Russia, North Korea and other distant places are the settings for Working's American explorations of love, loyalty, suffering both individual and social, and change. In his tour de force, "The World in the First Year of the Wire," Working juxtaposes the cataclysms of World War I and other scenes of far-flung conflict with small-town American life in such a way that all the world's woes and weirdness seem now to set the public terms of experience, replacing earlier expectations of news about the next street over. This is Working's way of showing how public terms change what people actually do in private life. The Irish Martyr is a remarkable response to what is human everywhere." —Reginald Gibbons, author of Sweetbitter
