Items related to The Killing Snows
Synopsis
December 12th, 1846. At the height of the Great Hunger - the Killing Snows. As the Irish Famine came towards its climax of starvation and disease, Ireland was hit by the worst snow storm in recent history. Nothing like it had been seen in living memory, nor has it in all the years since. In 1846, the potato crop had failed for the second time, and this time the failure was total. In a panic, the Government instituted road building works as a means of paying people to buy corn. By November half a million people were working at 7 and 8 pennies a day, dropping to 2 and 3 pennies as piecework was introduced. But the weather worsened and it began to snow. In 1990, a Famine Relief payroll was discovered in a farm building in County Mayo. It covered 4 weeks in November and December 1846 in the Ox Mountains in East Mayo. It clearly showed the evidence of the reduction in wages week after week. Most horrific of all, the payroll ends abruptly in the final week as the heaviest snowstorm hit Ireland on December 12th, and the people in the mountains were cut off to starve or freeze to death. 'The Killing Snows' was inspired by this document. It is also based on the true story of the man who wrote it, of the woman who loved him and of an impossible love story played out against a setting of famine, fever and death.
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Review
Charles Egan has personalised one of the most tragic periods of Irish history in an interesting and evocative way in his new book, which was launched this month in London. Whilst ultimately a fictional account, it is based on a series of authentic documents that were passed to Egan by his father, who gave him the box containing a lease, two payrolls and three letters which covered the years of the Irish Famine and have been stored for over 100 years. Cleverly and eloquently, they have been used to create a character based on the great-grand-uncle of the author that explores the struggle and survival of those in the Famine. Set in 1846, Luke Ryan, the son of a poor farmer in the West of Ireland has returned from England to hope run the family farm. However, he is faced with the growing epidemic and one of the worst snowstorms in Irish history (the Killing Snows of the title). As one of the few literate workers around Luke is appointed to supervise the road building projects throughout the country, but rather than helping it only serves to alienate him from his own people as their suffering heightens through disease and starvation. Dealing with his estrangement and the impossibility of forbidden love, Luke is pushed to his emotional limits. A powerful and compelling story which not only tells the story of Luke and his family, it is also a vital reminder of the fragility of life, love and survival. --Irish Post
Egan, whose father was brought up on a small farm in the townland of Corohore on the Kiltimagh/Swinford road, would never have written his book at all but for a box of documents found on the family farm 19 years ago. The discovery was made by the author s father in 1990 following the death of one of his brothers. Some of the documents a lease, two payrolls and three letters covered the years of the famine. Egan Snr. handed the cache of papers over to Charles. The documents painted a grim picture of life in Mayo in the mid-19th century as successive potato crops failed. In Charles Egan s own words they told an incredible story of suffering, of love and courage . The main character in the book, Luke Ryan, is based loosely on the experiences of one of the author s great granduncles, James, the son of a small tenant farmer who becomes a supervisor on a famine relief scheme. --Connaught Telegraph
It's a harrowing book I must say. But a warm book. --East Coast Radio
About the Author
Charles Egan was born in Nottingham, England of Irish parents. When he was five, the family returned to Ireland, as his father had been appointed Resident Medical Superintendant of St. Lukes, a psychiatric hospital in Clonmel, in County Tipperary. Every summer they visited his father s family s farm, outside Kiltimagh in County Mayo for a month. Charles grandmother and uncles spent many evenings, talking about family and local history. It was probably from this, that he became so interested in history. The family subsequently moved to County Wicklow, where he initially attended the De La Salle Brothers school in Wicklow town. He then went to Clongowes Wood College (James Joyce s alma mater) where he sat his Intermediate and Leaving Certificate examinations. He studied Commerce in University College Dublin, graduating in 1973. After an initial career in the private sector, including Marubeni Dublin, (where he met his future wife, Carmel), he joined the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) in Dublin. After a few years, the desire to be his own boss, led him to resign and set up his own business, which has now been running for 30 years. Apart from business, his main interests are history and international travel, both of which he has covered extensively.
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- PublisherCallioPress
- Publication date2010
- ISBN 10 0857780107
- ISBN 13 9780857780102
- BindingPaperback
- LanguageEnglish
- Number of pages508
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