Irish America

Irish America

Short story

The Gentle Ghosts of Ancestors

By Cormac MacConnell

February 1991

by Leave a Comment

At the beginning of the New Year, with the rain of reality on the window of her home. I hold my newest neighbor, Aoife Miniter, in my crooked arm. Aoife is three months old, a child of Connemara, healthy and strong and very beautiful. Her parents, Pat and Mary, are my neighbors and my friends. Aoife is their second child, their eldest being Cathal, who is a rogue, who calls me … [Read more...] about The Gentle Ghosts of Ancestors

A Mother’s Heartbreak

By Cormac MacConnell

May 1992

by Leave a Comment

Danny Treanor looks and acts like all the other Treanors now. But once he was the best boy soprano in Ireland. You would not think it to look at him now. But once an angel lived in his throat, for such a short time, the lifespan of a lark maybe, and then the angel went away and the following evening Danny's mother went away too, in the winter darkness, taking the brown leather … [Read more...] about A Mother’s Heartbreak

Celtic Romance

Compiled by Irish America Staff

April 1992

by Leave a Comment

The Understanding A short story written especially for Irish America by best-selling Irish novelist Maeve Binchy. Liam's mother came to see him for a week in New York every year around Memorial Day. He thought this was a good time to invite her, hot enough to be a bit exotic, not so hot that it would make her think he lived in a furnace. He planned the visit very … [Read more...] about Celtic Romance

The Exile

By Pete Hamill

October 1986

by Leave a Comment

A Story of Ireland Whenever Michael Walsh thought he was finished at last with Ireland, all of it would come flooding back, like a sudden wave on a glassy sea. He had tried to rid himself of that sad green country with cheap whiskey in too many bad bars in a city that was not his own. And now, on this perfect spring day in his eleventh year of New York exile, he could feel … [Read more...] about The Exile

Everything In This Country Must

By Colum McCann

December/ January 2021

Originally published in

April / May 1999

by Leave a Comment

A Short Story by Colum McCann It was a summer flood when our draft horse was caught in the river and the river smashed against stones. The sound of it to me was like the turning of locks. It was silage time and the water smelled of grass. The draft horse, Father’s favorite, had stepped in the river for a sniff maybe and she was caught, couldn’t move, her foreleg trapped … [Read more...] about Everything In This Country Must