Review: “Shannon” by Frank Delaney
This review of Irish author Frank Delaney’s new novel, “Shannon”, is contributed by Pete Maher of the Midwest Irish Focus
What in the world could a shell-shocked Marine Corps chaplain, a scheming Polish archbishop, a widowed nurse and an abused Irish child ever have in common with the River Shannon in 1922 Ireland?
Well, quite a lot, at least according to novelist Frank Delaney as he reveals in his latest novel, Shannon,” due out in bookstores around the country on February 10. In his third “big Irish novel” since his very successful “Ireland” in 2005 and follow-up “Tipperary” in 2007, Delaney has set a tale of personal healing and spiritual redemption against the Irish Civil war that followed closely on the heels of the 1921 treaty creating the Irish Free State.
In the story, we follow one Robert Shannon, a former Marine chaplain mentally unbalanced by his experiences on the battlefield in France, as he attempts to heal his mental scarring with a quest to find his familial roots located, he believes, somewhere along the river that bear his family name. For the first few chapters of the book, the reader is treated to both a physical and spiritual travelogue of sorts as we see Ireland through the eyes of Shannon who, thanks to his recent experiences, is still making an uncertain recovery but is gradually brought around by the kindness and hospitality of the people he encounters along the way.
But it wouldn’t be a Delaney book if there weren’t another plot or two stewing along and soon we are introduced to the “back story” that brought Shannon to Ireland and the various political intrigues of the Catholic Church of the time, in particular the Archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts, and what Father Shannon may or may not know about certain unspeakable activities there.
At the same time, Delaney introduces us to another character, a child in Ireland, who also undergoes incredible cruelty but, in time, finds himself placed in better circumstances. That storyline, we later learn, would have a very key role in the finale of the book.
The two other key characters, a widowed nurse and Polish archbishop, are also critical to not only providing vital background information on the circumstances of Shannon’s life but provide two very different influences on the recovery of the damaged priest.
Throughout the weaving of these storylines, Delaney takes great pains to evoke not only the physical but spiritual beauty of the land and people along the River Shannon. He provides incredibly researched details about not only the geological nature of a river winding its way to the sea but the mystical effect this simple body of water has had on its residents for millennia. Through his writing, Delaney exposes a deep love not only for the people of Ireland, and a deep understanding of their quirks and eccentricities, but an abiding curiosity concerning the origin of faith and the sustenance of religious conviction.
The novel also contains a timely message as well. As Robert Shannon, a victim of what is today more commonly classified as the almost harmless-sounding psychological “Post Traumatic Street Disorder” (PTSD), Delaney dwells on the challenges faced by not only the victims of this malady but those around the victim as well. With a conflict currently being waged in foreign lands by our own young men and women, with combat situations not unlike the unimaginable conditions faced by Great War combatants almost a century earlier, the author provides timely insights about the raw, damaged output of war and the far-reaching impact it can have.
The pacing of the book, like both of Delaney’s “Irish” novels before it, is a bit slow to take off, but once he’s put legs under each of the subplots this book is almost impossible to put down and provides a very satisfying, and maybe even surprising, conclusion to all the different storylines.
This review will appear in the February issue of the Midwest Irish Focus; it will be out on newsstands in all the usual places by the weekend.
The Midwest Irish Focus is a monthly Irish newspaper by Pete Maher that focuses primarily on Irish-Americans in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Frank Delaney will be in Kansas City on Thursday, March 19, at the Kansas City Public Library (Plaza Branch) at 7 p.m.
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