Writer’s debut novel tells story of Irish immigrants in Brooklyn

Brooklyn BookBeat: Brooklyn-Raised Author to Speak in Cobble Hill on Sept. 7

July 28, 2016 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Kathleen Donohoe will speak in Brooklyn on Sept. 7. Photo © Beowulf Sheehan

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Kathleen Donohoe’s debut novel “Ashes of Fiery Weather” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, on sale Aug. 30), tells the story of another Brooklyn — one of hardworking and displaced Irish immigrants coming to find a new start in its less glamorous neighborhoods.

Donohoe recreates the close-knit enclaves these families settled in just after the famine years in Ireland through to the devastation of 9/11; their stories and what tied them to this American city unfolds in her book. Library Journal’s reviewer observed, “That the author grew up in such a family makes her work that much more realized with strongly developed supporting characters, gritty realism and a non-Hollywood-style ending.”

Seven women’s stories intertwine around one fire company where the men — fathers, husbands, sons — have staked their lives and identity. The Glory Devlins are a close-knit company; when one member is injured or killed, the families are tended to by the rest of the company. To be a part of the Glory Devlins is to be a part of a legacy: a history of bravery, of having the instinct to run toward the danger, to search and rescue even when one’s own life is at stake and to also mourn those who never make it out.

Through each woman’s voice, Donohoe’s novel illuminates the intimate lives of these families. As the years go by, the ties to Ireland become more abstract. The church recedes in its power with each generation. There are marriages that are love matches and some that fall apart irreparably under the weight and pressure of the firehouse’s demands and losses. There is resilience bred into the life and humor as well. Donohoe explores what it means to be a woman in this tight-knit circle, to be wife and a mother — to have too many children or not be able to conceive, to have a baby unintentionally or to lose a child — and to be a daughter trying to break free of that life.

As Donohoe brings her narrative to the 21st century, much has altered for the families and the firehouse: a daughter has finally joined the ranks, another has gone to Ireland, another hopes to be found. The horrific terrorist attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11 finds this new generation of firefighters searching for their company members and for each other in the wreckage that will mark their city irrevocably.

Kathleen Donohoe was raised in Brooklyn in a family of Irish immigrant firefighters. She has published short stories in several literary magazines and currently serves on the Board of Irish American Writers and Artists. This is her first novel.