Freeporter publishes sixth novel

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Freeport’s own “Irish Writer” Tom Phelan latest novel, “Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told,” is due out next week. It is his sixth novel about the lives and times of dear old Ireland, and is a book that Phelan describes as a “gentle laugh about the relationships between people – Catholics and Protestants in the village of Gohen.”

Critics are calling it “bawdy, witty and fun.”

Phelan smiled. “It does have a lot of silly stuff about people and how they don’t trust each other,” he said. “I like to write about ordinary people. I’m forever alert to phrases and the sayings people use.”

Tom Phelan born and raised on a farm in County Laois, in the Irish midlands, has spent the last 21 years in Freeport writing novels. No path is straight and Phelan, who began his life as a priest, has ended up as a novelist, living wit his family on Church Street.

“I began writing in 1976, after I left the priesthood,” explained Phelan. “I wrote my first book – 900 pages. It was never published but I discovered my voice.” Phelan was 50-years-old when his first novel, “In the Season of the Daisies,” was accepted for publication by the Lilliput Press in Dublin. Books Ireland's reviewer wrote, "The most obvious question posed by a novelistic debut with as much resounding vigour as this is: Where has Mr. Phelan been?"

“In the Season of the Daisies” tells the story of an IRA killing in 1921, which takes the life of young Willie Doolin and maims his twin brother, Seanie, for life.

His next novel, “Iscariot” is a whodunit that also examines the priesthood and life in the small Irish community of Davinkill.

“Derrycloney” is an ode to rural Irish life in the 1940s. While “Nailer,” reveals the dark side of the Irish Catholic Church and targets decades of abuse of Ireland's most vulnerable citizens.

In “Canal Bridge,” published last year, Phelan tackles two big topics - First World War and the Easter Rebellion. The year is 1913, two friends from Ballyrannel join the British Army and soon become part of the slaughterhouse that was the First World War. The book also examines the divisive shadow cast by the Easter Rebellion against British rule in Ireland as the First World War ended and Irish boys came home from war.

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