A new book which had two launches in Limerick this week has all the ingredients to be a ”blockbuster” film or television series.
That was the verdict of Limerick Leader deputy editor, Eugene Phelan, who launched the novel Shanagolden by John Redington,(Seán Ó Roideacháin)in Limerick on Tuesday night while on Monday night in Shanagolden acclaimed playwright and sportswriter Liam Horan did the honours before a big attendance.
Beginning in July 1914 on the eve of the First World War and ending in 1922 as the Civil War comes to a close, “Shanagolden” traces the lives, the loves, the dreams and the despair of a small rural community as it is catapulted through three wars into the new Irish state.
Seen through the eyes of a football team whose last moment together celebrates an unlikely county title, the story finds itself in the trenches of Flanders, the steps of the GPO and on the hills of West Limerick as players take opposing sides in the conflicts that defined the State we live in today.
The book was inspired by the famous ballad by Sean McCarthy. “Sean would have been thrilled with the magnificent imagination and brilliant writing of John Redington in this book which is aptly timed with the centenary of 1916 coming up,” said Mr Phelan.
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