The idea for this book belongs to my agent, Richard McDonough, who has championed my work for most of a decade. Robin Robertson and Jill Bialosky, my editors and friends, have been unfailing in their support for this work and have guided this book into being. I am ever grateful.
My colleagues at Lynch & Sons in Milford are a gift to me and to the communities we serve.
To Michael Heffernan, Matthew Sweeney, Richard Tillinghast, Keith Taylor, Seamus Heaney, Dennis O’Driscoll, Philip Casey, Peter Stine, Macdara Woods, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, David Crumm, Bob Root, John O’Donohue, and Martina Scanlan, whose voices and sound counsel added to this text, I am always indebted. Likewise I’m grateful to Julie Young, Pat Lynch, Mary Callaghan, Marilyn and Mike Kinna for their contributions. Especial thanks to George Martin for his careful reading, comments, and corrections.
Portions of this book were broadcast on BBC Radio in the series Colloquies, produced by Kate McAll, with whom I’ve worked for a decade now. She is an ideal listener, a deft writer and editor, and friend for life.
Excerpts from this book have appeared, often in slightly different form, in Image, The Cresset, The Christian Century, the New York Times, The Bastard on the Couch, the Times of London, the Irish Times, The U.S. Catholic, and the Los Angeles Times, to whose editors I am grateful.
Thanks too to Gerry Collison, editor of the Clare Champion, and his staff of reporters and photographers for delivering to my home in Milford every week word from my home in West Clare.
To P. J., Breda, and Louise Roche; Sonny and Maura Carmody and family; the Murray sisters, Anne, Katherine, Maureen, and Theresa; Patrick and Nora Carmody; James and Maureen Carmody; J. J. McMahon; Martin Roche; Fr. Patrick Culligan, P. P.; Fr. James Walsh, P.P.; Mr. Michael P. Houlihan, Esq.; Mr. Geroid Williams, Esq.; Dr. Paddy Waldron, Jr., and Mr. Patrick Waldron, Esq.; Mary Ann Radscheid; and Maureen O’Dea Mundy—each of whom has shared his or her virtuosity at seeing things for how they are—I am indebted.
There is no reckoning my debt to Mary Tata, who has abided both my absences and presences for twenty years, thanks be to God.