Carby's Fate

Carby Bolger assumes, as he has all his life, that he’ll inherit the family farm in County Kilkenny, Ireland. After all, he’s the eldest child and only son, making him heir by ancient custom. And when his ailing father finally dies, Carby—a prickly loner of a man—plans to finally capitalize on the farm’s secret.

The heir apparent’s plans come crashing down when his sister Molly returns from London to care for their ill parents. When she becomes pregnant, with no husband in sight, her condition—and her lack of any effort to hide it—shocks and outrages the staunchly Catholic community. But when her son is born, he immediately steals the heart of his dying grandfather, a beloved member of the close-knit community. More than that, to Carby’s horror, the “little bastard” inherits everything.

What follows is a rancorous lawsuit on which everyone in the county seems to have an opinion—especially the regulars at Finnegan’s Pub. Faced with an abrasive, disliked judge, Carby finds himself a local hero for the first time in his life. How long he can retain his newfound local favor depends on his own patience and his sister, who plans to sell the farm (and, unwittingly, its secret) to an American, driving Carby to desperate and—as it turns out—fateful measures.

A classical piece of Irish storytelling, Carby’s Fate combines family drama and duplicity with violence, betrayal, and redemptive hope.

Thomas J. Rice was born in rural Ireland. At thirteen he dropped out of school and immigrated to the United States, graduating from Cornell University. He received a PhD in sociology and spent twenty years in academe.

Rice's academic life included serving as professor of sociology at Georgetown University, a research associate position at Harvard, and a stint as an NEH Fellow at Berkeley. He is the coauthor of four books and over fifty articles and essays in refereed academic journals and editorial pages.

Turning to full-time writing in 2007, Rice's first novella Hard Truths was selected by Otto Penzler and Robert Crais for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories of 2012. Far from the Land: An Irish Memoir was published in 2010. His short stories, "All Souls' Day," and "The Night of the Arabian," were published in 2013 and 2014, respectively. . Rice is currently writing Finding Nora, a novel set in Ireland, about a woman's search for her birth mother.