Hours Of Gladness: A Novel of the Irish in America, from the Acclaimed Author of The Wages of Fame

The Story

When Dick OGorman and Billy Kilroy choose Paradise Beach, New Jersey, as the ideal place to smuggle ashore Cuban missiles for the Irish Republican Army, no one realizes the violent upheaval into which the community will soon be thrown. It is 1984. Irish Americans, preoccupied by a loss of political power in the cities, have little sympathy for Ireland and the IRA. This is especially true of Patrolman Mick ODay, an ex-Marine sergeant haunted by moral failure in Vietnam. The final element in this combustible mix is a British secret agent disguised as a priest who ignites a physical and spiritual explosion that tears the community apart at its very seams.