Christina McKenna

The Disenchanted Widow Christina McKenna

Marc Notes: It's 1981 and Belfast is burning. So, too, is freshly widowed Bessie Halstone: she burns with a desire to break with her troubled past. With her feckless husband gone, she leaves home hurriedly with her naughty nine-year-old son, Herkie, and not much else. The Dentist, an IRA enforcer, is on her tail. He's convinced that Bessie, with her yella hair all puffed up like Merlin Monroe's, has absconded with the takings from a bank heist. But car trouble strands mother and son in Tailorstown, a sleepy Ulster village. Bessie finds temporary work as housekeeper for the handsome and mysterious parish priest. In the meantime, Lorcan Strong, an artist and a native of the village, is summoned home. He's been shanghaied into forging paintings for the IRA. It's work he cannot refuse;his mother and their business are under threat. Yet things are not what they seem in quirky Tailorstown. There is a sleeper in the village. But who? Bizarrely, it is young Herkie, due to his childish curiosity, who unravels the mystery and saves the day. Publisher Marketing: It s the summer of 1981. Newly widowed Bessie Halstone is fleeing Belfast with her young son, Herkie. She s wrongly suspected of pocketing 10,000, the loot from a heist carried out by Packie, her late (and unmourned) husband. Bessie has plans. She longs to make a fresh start. But first she must reach the safety of her sister s home, in County Sligo, to borrow money for the trip. She doesn t make it. Car trouble forces her to sojourn in Tailorstown, a sleepy rural community. Her plans are put on hold as she decides to lay low for a while. She ll need cash. She finds work as a housekeeper for the handsome but mysterious parish priest. In the meantime, Lorcan Strong, an artist and a native of Tailorstown, is summoned home. With reluctance, he returns to the place where he feels almost a stranger, a town he has long outgrown. A chance meeting with young Herkie Halstone leads Lorcan into the world of the disenchanted Bessie and into a grave danger that has pursued them both from Belfast. The Disenchanted Widow is an unforgettable peek into small-town life in Ireland s recent past. It s a glorious successor to McKenna s first Tailorstown novel, The Misremembered Man." Review Citations: Romantic Times 09/01/2013 pg. 60 (EAN 9781611099539, Paperback) Contributor Bio:  McKenna, Christina David M. Kiely's long career as a freelance writer has included biographies, short stories, crime novels, mysteries, and several works of nonfiction. When his spouse and coauthor, Christina McKenna, was eleven, a paranormal "visitor" tormented her home for six weeks. Only through the intervention of an exorcist could the spirit be expelled. The authors live in Rostrevor, Northern Ireland.