ISBN: 978-1-936558-12-4 * eISBN: 978-1-936558-13-1 * Paperback $16.95 * E-book $4.99 * Publication: June 7, 2011

Lagan Love Facebook page * Peter Murphy’s blog * Lagan Love Website

Lagan Love is a story that has been with me for many years – since I used to spend hazy nights in Dublin. It lingered as the world changed. I wanted to remember some of what was – and the people who cherished it. After I left Dublin, the story stayed with me like a vague yearning while I was busy doing all that fathers have to do, pecking away at a draft as time passed. When I finally packed my sons off to University, and lost a job I had grown to hate, I knew it was time to sit down and try to tell this story properly. It is a story of all that we give for our dreams and how, sometimes, that price is more than we can bear.

It is set in Dublin in 1987 when: 

Another brave new world beckoned but Dublin was dubious – too often hope had been trampled down by foreign armies or strangled in dark alleys by the shadows of avarice and graft. Dubliners would rise to the inevitability of it all. They had risen up before and shaken off the Danes and Normans, and then the British: only that took forever. No self-respecting Jackeen could consider putting faith in hope even as European money rebuilt the roads and opened the whole country to progress.

Except for Sinead, slogging towards her degree and hoping for a good job when the future came. But it was a struggle and once in a while she had to let her hair down. Like the night she got drunk and slept with Aidan; something she regretted the next morning:

Her head was spinning and her stomach was delicate but she had to get going. She'd sort it all out later. Right now she needed to sneak out, as quietly as she could but it was too late; he'd woken. She turned away and wriggled into her clothes as he fingered his hair away from his face and scratched his stubbled chin.

“You're sneakin’ off then?”

“Yeah, I've class this morning.”

“Better late than never I suppose,” he muttered as she searched for her shoes.

“I didn’t hear that.”

“I said 'that’s too bad'. I was goin’ to take you somewhere nice for breakfast.”

“Ya, that's too bad but I gotta run. I had a great time – you know.”

“That’s it – 'I had a great time'.” He smiled and sat up reaching for a small cigar.

“Feck-off, I don't want a row; I just want to get to my lecture.”

“Off you go then, you're probably scared anyway.”

Sinead froze as she slid into her shoes. “What the hell would I be scared of – falling head-over-heels for some drunken poet?”

For Aidan, it was all so natural. His star was rising on Dublin’s literary scene but he still needed all the reassurance he could find.

Grogan's would be open soon. He could start ambling over, slowly. He didn't like being the first: that smacked of desperation but it would be quiet and he could spread his notes on the bar; bits and pieces of paper scratched out and rewritten with a different word here or a new line there – so many possibilities hanging on delicate threads. But there was something beautiful in there if he could just reorganize it; if he could just find that pattern that was not a pattern at all.

His mind was a mess of disorganized verses piled on top of each other. Some were orphans and would wither but others lingered defiantly, like stones in his shoes. They were the ones he found the time to polish. But even some of them were destined to irrelevance. He sipped his first with trepidation and lit another cigar. He'd start in a minute, after he had his smoke, after his first pint. By then everything would settle down.

Janice had come to Ireland to find herself:

“Are you sure about this?” her mother had inquired with restrained insistence.

“Mother, I have told you several times. It is what I want to do.”

“I certainly hope so. Your father worked very hard to put that money aside for you. It cost us our marriage you know? But I am sure you are old enough now to do as you will.”

“Mother, I am twenty-two years of age.”

“Don't be silly, you will always be my child, even when you are being headstrong and rash.”

Janice got that from her father along with a fund. It was all that was left of him. Her mother expunged the rest: except the insurance money; she felt entitled to that. She had been his wife, even after his attentions had strayed. Yet he had left money for Janice, to spend on her education but he had stipulated that she take her Master's Degree abroad. Janice had chosen Ireland because she thought that would please him. He was French Canadian but she knew he would get the point.

Janice has grown tired of her sheltered existence in Toronto and when Aidan leads her through the veils of the Celtic Twilight, she doesn’t hesitate. In their love, Aidan sees a chance for redemption and Janice sees a chance for recognition.

Sinead tells her that it is all nonsense as she keeps her head down and her eyes fixed on her own prize. She is a little miffed that Janice and Aidan are together, so there is little she can say. And besides, she has enough to do as her parents are torn apart by the rumors of church scandals.

But after a few nights in Grogan’s, where Dublin’s bohemians gather, or a day in Clonmacnoise among the ruins of Celtic Crosses, it doesn’t matter as the ghosts of Aidan’s mythologies take form and prey on the friends until everything is at risk. 

Lagan Love is a sensuous story of love, lust and loss that brings into question the cost we pay for our dreams.

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