Tom Phelan

Tom Phelan had just turned fifty when his first novel, In the Season of the Daisies, was accepted for publication. One reviewer later wrote, "The most obvious question posed by a novelistic debut with as much resounding vigour as this is: Where has Mr. Phelan BEEN?"

Since then, Tom has penned a memoir, We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It: A Memoir of My Irish Boyhood, and five other novels: Nailer, The Canal Bridge, Iscariot, Derrycloney, and Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told.

His novels deal with such themes as Irish soldiers in World War I, the effects of ancient animosities, returned emigrants, the Irish industrial schools, the priesthood, and life in rural Irish communities.

In We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It, Tom looks back on his format

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