About the Author:
Andrew Joyce left home at seventeen to hitchhike throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico. He wouldn't return from his journey until years later when he decided to become a writer. Joyce has written seven books. His first novel, Redemption: The Further Adventures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, was awarded the Editors' Choice Award for Best Western of 2013. A subsequent novel, Yellow Hair, received the Book of the Year award from Just Reviews and Best Historical Fiction of 2016 from Colleen's Book Reviews.
Check out Andrew’s Website
Read a Snippet:
Andrew Joyce left home at seventeen to hitchhike throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico. He wouldn't return from his journey until years later when he decided to become a writer. Joyce has written seven books. His first novel, Redemption: The Further Adventures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, was awarded the Editors' Choice Award for Best Western of 2013. A subsequent novel, Yellow Hair, received the Book of the Year award from Just Reviews and Best Historical Fiction of 2016 from Colleen's Book Reviews.
Check out Andrew’s Website
My name is Andrew Joyce and I write
books for a living. Debdatta has been kind enough to allow me a little space on
her blog to promote my new book, Mahoney. So, I
thought I’d tell you how it came about. But to do that, I gotta tell you how my
mind works.
A few years ago, I had just finished
reading Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn for the third time, and I started
thinking about what ever happened to those boys, Tom and Huck. They must have
grown up, but then what? So I sat down at my computer and banged out Redemption: The Further Adventures of Huck
Finn and Tom Sawyer. I had them as adults in the Old West. Kind of like
Wyatt Earp type characters. It was a modest success and won an award as Best
Western of 2013.
I think my favorite book of all time is
The Grapes of Wrath by John
Steinbeck. I’ve read it a number of times over the years. The last time being
two years ago. Now, for those of you who may not have read it, it’s about one
family’s trek from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl of the 1930s to the “Land of Milk and
Honey,” also known as California. Of course. California wasn’t a land of milk
and honey. If anything, the family was worse off in California than they were
in Oklahoma. The subtext of the book is how those on the lower rungs of
society’s ladder are oppressed and have very little voice to fight against that
oppression.
Near the end of the book, Tom Joad, the
protagonist, runs afoul of the law and must leave his family or else be
arrested on a trumped up charge or be killed by the big landowners’ goons. His
mother, quite naturally, will miss him and is worried for him. The words he
spoke to her in that scene have become iconic.
"I'll be aroun' in the dark. I'll be
everywhere-wherever you look. Wherever there is a fight so hungry people can
eat, I'll be there. Wherever there is a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there.
I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready.
An' when our folk eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they
build—why, I'll be there." — Tom Joad, The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
So, here’s what I did. Just like with
Huck Finn, I started thinking about what ever happened to Tom Joad after he
left his family. I wanted to write about injustices and the people who suffer
those injustices. I thought I’d follow Tom around and write about what he
encountered from about the mid-thirties to 1963 when Martin Luther King, Jr.
gave his “I have a Dream” speech.
However, there was just one problem
with that: copyright laws. The character of Tom Joad belongs to the heirs of
John Steinbeck. So, I had to come up with another angle. After some thought on
the matter, I decided to expand my initial time frame from between 1933 and
1963 to 1849 and 1963. I’d start the story in Ireland during the potato famine
and work my way to America and then I’d end up where I had originally intended.
Here’s the blurb for the book:
In
this compelling, richly researched novel, author Andrew Joyce tells a riveting
story of adventure, endurance, and hope as the Mahoney clan fights to gain a
foothold in America.
In the
second year of an Gorta Mhór—the Great Famine—nineteen-year-old Devin Mahoney
lies on the dirt floor of his small, dark cabin. He has not eaten in five days.
His only hope of survival is to get to America, the land of milk and honey.
After surviving disease and storms at sea that decimate crew and passengers
alike, Devin’s ship limps into New York Harbor three days before Christmas,
1849. Thus starts an epic journey that will take him and his descendants
through one hundred and fourteen years of American history, including the Civil
War, the Wild West, and the Great Depression.
Well, that’s how Mahoney came about. For those of you who may read it, I hope you
enjoy it. It took me almost two years of research, writing, and editing to get
it to where I wanted and to tell the story I wanted to tell.
Read a Snippet:
The reflected firelight flickered across awestruck faces and
mirrored in the eyes of those who listened as stories were told of yesterday’s
indignities and tomorrow’s aspirations. The look in those yearning eyes spoke
of hopes and dreams. The laughter heard around the fire conveyed a sense that
somehow it would all work out. For a few short hours, on Saturday nights, in
the deep woods of a place none of them had ever heard of before, the constant
fear that lived within their hearts was banished from their lives.
In time, they would prevail. Their sons and daughters
would one day stand straight and tall as proud Americans, as proud as their
fathers had been to be Irish.
Check out the book on Amazon
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