William Brennan

Bill Brennan was raised in The Tip, an Irish neighborhood in the shoe factory city of Brockton, Massachusetts as the Industrial Revolution was waning in New England. His first six novels examine the working class Irish experience through the eyes of characters roaming the streets of The Tip and their children who have moved on.

The novels range from comic to tragic and present a realistic view of the Irish experience in their ghettos in the cities of America and of their progeny after the neighborhoods lost their identity. The timeline of Bill's novels begins in the years immediately prior to the Civil War and continues to the present.

Even after Amazon changed it's policy on advertising in the spring of 2019 which hurt small players, three of Bill's books still sell at a reasonable clip: Murphy's War (about the Japanese Internment during WWII), Charity for All (about the social constraints on reporting sex abuse in schools - written prior to the Catholic scandal in Boston and the Penn State sex abuse case), and Harrigan (about the impact of American Transcendentalism in immigrant communities in and around Boston just prior to the Civil War).

His seventh novel, The Choice Not Made, moves Bill from the old neighborhood to the national stage. It is an alternate history of what might have happened had President Abraham Lincoln not been assassinated. It is set primarily in the last days of the president's life when he begins to apprehend the problems of reconstruction and sees that failure to get it right could lead to decades of racial strife and continued political division.

Brennan's character studies and dialogue have been called among the most authentic since those of James T. Farrell's Young Lonigan.

Bill is always pleased to join book clubs in discussions by speakerphone, free of charge, of his novels. Don't hesitate to email him to check his schedule at brennan944@verizon.net. Most clubs enjoy having the author available to answer questions interesting and entertaining.

He occasionally reviews books he believes to be excellent and worthy of the attention of readers. They may be found at:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AFTRPGOAUZTRM5RLW65PVAQ3326Q/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_gw_tr?ie=UTF8

In 2015, The Dublin (Ireland) Business School contacted Irish and Irish American scholars and solicited research papers on Irish and Irish American culture, literature and history for possible publication.

Mary Kelly, Ph.D. Professor of History at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire, USA asked if Bill would be interested in jointly creating a paper on his background and work. He happily agreed as she has been the champion of his writing for many years. He would write about his novels and The Tip, the neighborhood in which he grew up and that was the inspiration for much of his work, and Professor Kelly would place his contribution in historical and cultural context for the paper.

They worked back and forth on the paper and it was accepted by the Dublin Business School and published in 2015. The resulting Paper: The Tip: Shoe Shops, American Dreams, and the Ultimate Irish-American Hard Luck Story, provides insight into Brennan's work and on Irish American enclaves during the Industrial Revolution in the United States.

Readers interested in the Irish Diaspora especially as it relates to the first half of the twentieth century in America may find the paper of interest…and even read one of his books.

Thanks again to Mary Kelly and the Dublin Business School.

Here’s the link:

https://esource.dbs.ie/bitstream/handle/10788/2964/31-78-1-PB.pdf?

sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Bill has a favor to ask: the works of many authors that cannot be characterized among the popular genre books are very well written and tell powerful stories that many find entertaining. While these novels do not sell in great number, they often have small but loyal followings. Please consider writing reviews of them on Amazon. Reviews, even if not five stars or long, give writers hope that they are read and appreciated.

Bill lives in Northern Virginia with his wife Barbara.