Yesterday, on Sunday, March 17th, many people celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by wearing clothing in the symbolic colour green, chugging green beer, and telling dirty Irish limerick jokes around the supper table. I’m lucky to have some Irish blood running through me on my mother’s and father’s sides of the family, so I have a few sweary tales that would make you laugh.
However, I want to share three facts that might blow your mind about St. Patrick’s Day:
- St. Patrick was the Patron Saint of Ireland but wasn’t Irish. He was born in Britain in 385 AD. There is a considerable debate on whether it was Scotland or Wales. Plus, he was never officially canonized as a saint; he was given the title in popular lore to recognize his contributions to the Catholic Church.
- In all the surviving historical artwork, St. Patrick always wore a blue robe, not green. Blue was featured in flags and sports uniforms for many years, but green became the national colour associated with Ireland some time in 1640.
- Patrick wasn’t his given name. His real name was Maewyn Succat. Once he became a priest, he adopted the new name of Patrick, after Patricius (the Latin word for father).
These facts sound like amazing secrets or scandals that would be perfect for a fiction novel. This got me thinking about some of my favourite authors writing memorable Irish characters.
One of the best crime fiction books I have read this year is SMALL MERCIES by Dennis Lehane. Lehane is an American author born in Dorchester, Massachusetts (and he is one of my favourite crime fiction authors). His parents emigrated from Ireland, so he has first-hand knowledge of how to write the perfect Irish American characters.
Small Mercies is a fictitious thriller set in Boston in 1974, based on facts about the city’s busing crisis. The story centers around a single mother whose daughter goes missing on the same night a Black man is found dead under suspicious circumstances. I could not put this book down… and I’m not going to lie, I had big emotions while reading this one. Gah!
The interesting thing to know about this novel, is that the author actually experienced the protestors from the predominantly Irish American enclave of Southie (a Boston neighbourhood), when they took to the streets in 1974. He was in the car with his father when they made a wrong turn into the middle of the protest. People were screaming racist slogans and waving burning dolls attached to poles. Lehane said the images from that protest were burned into his memory, and he finally decided to write about them.
Dennis Lehane has written a powerful novel about a tough Irish woman who knows how to fight for what she believes in. You won’t find green clothing or green beer in this novel, nor the dirty limericks. What you will find: Mary Pat Fennessy is an unquestionable racist. She has passed down some feelings of hate to her children, and she realizes by the end of the book that this has led to some terrible things befalling her and her children. You know the old saying, ‘Mother always knows best?’ You’ll have to read it, to know whether she does or not.
I shouldn’t tell you too much, other than you need to READ THIS BOOK! It was fabulous and I highly recommend it.
About the Novel (taken from Inside the Front Cover):
The acclaimed New York Times bestselling writer returns with a masterpiece to rival Mystic River —an all-consuming tale of revenge, family love, festering hate, and insidious power, set against one of the most tumultuous episodes in Boston’s history.
In the summer of 1974, a heatwave blankets Boston, and Mary Pat Fennessy is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of “Southie,” the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart.
One night, Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances. The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched—asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business.
Set against the hot, tumultuous months when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, Small Mercies is a superb thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. It is a mesmerizing and wrenching work that only Dennis Lehane could write.
