New York, 1861. Three young men from West Cork step off a packet ship into a city that has no use for them. Within a year, all three have signed their names to a Union Army ledger for forty dollars cash.
One immigrant’s journey from the hunger of Ireland to the battlefields of the American Civil War.
Michael O’Sullivan is a tenant farmer’s son who can handle a pen as well as his fists.
Facing eviction, starvation, and brothers in exile to keep alive, he walks to the Prince Street Armory and sells his skin to the Union.
Thrown into the Fighting 69th New York, Michael and his friends are made into soldiers under the blackthorn stick of Sergeant Patrick Kelleher, a veteran of the British regular army who knows that bullets care nothing for Irish pride.
From the malarial mud of the Virginia Peninsula to the smoke of Antietam and the gathering storm of Gettysburg, they discover that war in the New World is not a crusade.
It is an industrial slaughterhouse, and Irish blood is cheap.
When Michael earns his commission, he trades one battlefield for two: Confederate artillery in Virginia, and the class war waiting for him in the parlors of New York’s Irish-American elite.
One immigrant’s journey from the hunger of Ireland to the battlefields of the American Civil War.
Michael O’Sullivan is a tenant farmer’s son who can handle a pen as well as his fists.
Facing eviction, starvation, and brothers in exile to keep alive, he walks to the Prince Street Armory and sells his skin to the Union.
Thrown into the Fighting 69th New York, Michael and his friends are made into soldiers under the blackthorn stick of Sergeant Patrick Kelleher, a veteran of the British regular army who knows that bullets care nothing for Irish pride.
From the malarial mud of the Virginia Peninsula to the smoke of Antietam and the gathering storm of Gettysburg, they discover that war in the New World is not a crusade.
It is an industrial slaughterhouse, and Irish blood is cheap.
When Michael earns his commission, he trades one battlefield for two: Confederate artillery in Virginia, and the class war waiting for him in the parlors of New York’s Irish-American elite.
Chapter One opens far from the battlefields of Virginia.
Ten men move through the darkness toward Lord Shannon’s granary.
There is an ash club, stolen grain, a desperate plan, and a cavalry ambush that ends the only life Michael O’Sullivan has ever known.
What begins in the rain and peat of West Cork will eventually carry him across the Atlantic and into the ranks of the Union Army.
Join John G. Carey’s reader list for book updates, research notes, excerpts, and first word when Tenant Boy, Officer’s Sword is released.
Rain. Stone walls. Peat. Hunger.
Michael’s story begins in a world where eviction and starvation are never distant possibilities.
Rain. Stone walls. Peat. Hunger.
Michael’s story begins in a world where eviction and starvation are never distant possibilities.
Rain. Stone walls. Peat. Hunger.
Michael’s story begins in a world where eviction and starvation are never distant possibilities.
Rain. Stone walls. Peat. Hunger.
Michael’s story begins in a world where eviction and starvation are never distant possibilities.
Rain. Stone walls. Peat. Hunger.
Michael’s story begins in a world where eviction and starvation are never distant possibilities.
Rain. Stone walls. Peat. Hunger.
Michael’s story begins in a world where eviction and starvation are never distant possibilities.
The 69th New York was the best known of the three regiments in the Irish Brigade.
Its men carried a green silk flag with a gold harp and sunburst beside the Stars and Stripes, and they went into some of the worst ground of the Civil War behind it.
Everything in these books that belongs to the historical record is drawn from that record: the generals, the regiments, the orders, the battles, and the dates.
Only the men at the center of the story are invented.
He returned to the United States in 1982 to work in thoroughbred racing and went on to serve thirty years in law enforcement, including ten years on mounted patrol and twenty years as a detective, followed by six years training new officers.
The story that became Tenant Boy, Officer’s Sword began with his late father, Gerald, and with a lifelong reverence for what the Irish diaspora built, endured, and paid for.
It lived in his head for decades.
Tenant Boy, Officer’s Sword is his first novel.
Paperback and digital editions will be available through major booksellers, with signed copies offered directly by the author.
