Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT #FamilySaga #HistoricalFiction MAHONEY by @huckfinn76

Today’s team review is from Noelle, she blogs here https://saylingaway.wordpress.com

Noelle has been reading Mahoney by Andrew Joyce

I am a big fan of Andrew Joyce’s books, and I think this may be the best one yet. Perhaps it’s because the book is so entertaining, perhaps it’s because I’m part Irish through the migration during an Gorta Mór (the Irish potato famine or great hunger), or perhaps because I am a sucker for history and family sagas – but probably all three.

Mahoney is the story of the family by that name and was written as a trilogy tied together by common ancestry. The reader is first introduced to Devin, who is the last of the Mahoneys, famine and sickness having taken everyone else in his family. He lies on the dirt floor of the single room in his small, dark home in Ireland, waiting to die. When given the opportunity to take a ship to America, which looms large in his mind as a place where he can grow rich, he takes it.

The author has done some incredible research for his book, as he has for all the previous ones. Devin’s voyage to Quebec in the crowded and disease-ridden hold of a ship is richly drawn in its sordid and dangerous details. The story of how Devin makes his way and his living in cities prejudiced against the Irish is intense and his letters as a soldier in the Civil War are heart-breaking.

The next Mahoney we meet is Dillon, son of Devin. His life is a tapestry of adventures, from working on the transcontinental railroad, to becoming a cowboy on a vast cattle ranch, to earning a reputation as a gunslinger in the Wild West, to earning a fortune as an oil wildcatter in California.

Finally there is David, the dissipated and spoiled son of Devin. The disappointment I initially felt with this character is gradually lifted with his foray into the South during the time of the Depression and the Klu Klux Klan.

All in all, an adventurous ride I could not put down. The writer’s strengths are in his ability to paint the history in succinct brush strokes, in the development of his characters, and most of all, in the dialogue. The story of Devin is perhaps the strongest of the three, as this characters has the most to overcome and does it mainly on his own. I wanted to stay with his story, but events of the time interfered. Dillon and David have somewhat miraculous help at critical times (who’s not to say they wouldn’t?) to move their story forward.

Nevertheless, Andrew Joyce gives us a rich and colorful picture of America, with all its faults, from the Irish migration to the Deep South of the 1930s, covering a lot of history with an engrossing story.

I highly recommend Mahoney if you want a great read.

 

In this compelling, richly researched novel, author Andrew Joyce tells a story of determination and grit as the Mahoney clan fights to gain a foothold in America. From the first page to the last, fans of Edward Rutherfurd and W. Michael Gear will enjoy this riveting, historically accurate tale of adventure, endurance, and hope.

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.

AmazonUK | AmazonUS

 

Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT #HistoricalFiction MAHONEY by @huckfinn76

Today’s team review is from Barb, she blogs here https://barbtaub.com/

Barb has been reading Mahoney by Andrew Joyce

 

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My review: 4.5 out of 5 stars for Mahoney

Devin Mahoney, the descendant of kings, lay on the dirt floor of his small, dark cabin, waiting for Death to take him by the hand and lead him out of this world of misery.

It’s not exactly the first line of Andrew Joyce’s new generational saga Mahoney, but I’m betting it was the one he wrote first. Mahoney is a coming of age story in three parts, both for the three generations of an Irish immigrant family it encompasses, and even more for America, the country they help to shape.

When we meet Devin Mahoney in Part One of the saga, he’s dying of hunger during Ireland’s potato famine, probably around 1846. The mixture of absentee landlords, repressive taxes, and remnants of feudal land systems combines with crop failure to create a perfect storm of economic devastation. Devin has already lost his family to the rampaging diseases of the workhouse when the landlord’s agent informs him he’s being evicted from his family farm and sent to America.

The nineteen-year-old’s journey across the ravaged landscape of Ireland, followed by the horrific passage on a “coffin ship” are personal glimpses into the slow-moving train wreck that was Ireland. Devin’s determination to return to his homeland as a rich man after making his fortune among the supposed ‘streets paved with gold’ in America slowly matures into a resolve to make a life for himself and his young family in the new land. In the best generational saga tradition, Devin’s life in America is a clean slate, written in a new country.

Devin Mahoney arrives at a pivotal moment in the history of the young United States. Through hard work, he builds a life and home in America. He becomes a husband and a father. But Devin remembers the virtual slavery of his youth, and feels he owes it to the past and his dead family in Ireland, as well as the future and his new family in America, to join the fight against slavery when the country heads into Civil War.

Part Two of takes up the tale of Dillon Mahoney, Devin’s son. If Part One resonates with my own family history, it’s in Part Two that Andrew Joyce settles into his comfort zone, writing confidently about a western landscape and period he’s researched extensively and knows intimately. While Dillon’s father’s story was of America on the brink of Civil War, the son’s tale embraces that most pivotal of American self images, the Wild West. Never mind that the actual “wild west” only lasted about thirty years (roughly 1865-1895). Revolvers were newfangled inventions that only were accurate to about 50 feet, and (at least in the earlier models) would burn the shooter’s hands. The famous Shootout at the OK Corral occurred when Sheriff Virgil Earp, along with his deputized brothers and Doc Holliday, enforced Tombstone’s anti-gun ordinance. The only things that occurred less frequently than shoot-outs were bank robberies—probably less than ten across that period.But even though history (and Hollywood) got so much of it wrong, there’s still something compelling about that period that defined so much of what we Americans believe ourselves to be—adventurous, brave, and entitled as hell.

Not a stetson between them… [“Fort Worth Five Photograph.” –Supposedly taken after Butch Cassidy’s Hole in the Wall Gang robbed the bank in Winnemucca, Nevada and sent to the bank manager along with a thank-you note from Cassidy.
Front row left to right: Harry A. Longabaugh, alias the Sundance Kid, Ben Kilpatrick, alias the Tall Texan, Robert Leroy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy; Standing: Will Carver & Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry; Fort Worth, Texas, 1900.
Source: From the studio of John Schwartz.]

It would have been easy for author Joyce to plunk his young hero down in the middle of the stereotype: the cowboy on a cattle drive, the quick-draw sheriff in gun duels with bank robbers and cattle rustlers. But unlike his father’s story, Dillon’s tale is told in the first person, offering readers an intimate look at the next pivotal period in America history, the westward expansion. Hearing Dillon’s voice and sharing his thoughts both makes his story more immediate and compelling, and also keeps him from becoming another stereotypic hard-eyed hero of the Wild West.

I looked down at my still-smoking gun as if I had never seen it before. ‘Keep ’em covered, Bob. I’ll be right back.’

Still holding my gun, on unsteady legs, I walked to the back of barn and emptied my gut, splashing my boots in the process.

On that fiery-hot day in the middle of nowhere, in a godforsaken patch of desert, I learned that it is not easy to kill a man. It’s not easy at all, even if the man needed killing.

Dillon’s is the essential middle generation role, successful owner of his position in the world, fully assimilated and at home in a way his Irish immigrant father never could have been. At the same time, America as a country is coming of age, accepting and embracing its role in the world.

Part Three tells the story of Dillon’s son, David. In a generational saga, this third generation Mahoney’s rebellion against the preceding generation’s values and restrictions echoes his grandfather’s disgust with the past—a similarity only made possible by David’s confidence of belonging to his father’s world.

Again, this coming of age is an echo of America itself as it’s thrust from the glitter, self-satisfaction, and excesses of the 1920s into the grim reality of the Great Depression. In keeping with that loss of identity and confidence, David’s tale is again told in the third person, like that of his grandfather Devin. For example, David watches his world collapse after the stock market crash with the same fatalistic passivity as his grandfather lying on his dirt floor in Ireland waits for death. But David is also the product of his own father’s successful assimilation and confident place in his world. David’s encounters on the road, and especially with survivors of an actual horrific racial attack in Rosewood Florida, awaken the same disgust at injustice and determination to do something about it that connect him firmly to his father and grandfather. Or, as Dillon puts what is essentially the theme of the book,

If good men don’t stand up to evil, the bad men will win, and this land will never be tamed.

David, the grandson of immigrant Irish Mahoneys, is a synthesis of the preceding two generations—a mirror of America’s own struggles to accept a place on the world stage while still coming to terms with a past and present that include slavery, discrimination, and intolerance.

Mahoney isn’t a perfect book. Having just three men embody a hundred years of history meant they had to do too much, be too many places, and sometimes coincidence seemed too forced. But if you look at it as a generational saga of an entire country, as viewed through a small intimate family mirror, the overall effect is mesmerizing.

I already knew Andrew Joyce as a terrific storyteller (in the best Irish tradition?), but in Mahoney I see him as a terrific writer as well, from the overarching vision to the minute details of the story. He gives just enough detail to allow readers to build a scene in our own mind, while allowing his characters to grow, to change, and to learn, and above all, to make their new land into a better place for those who follow.

 

In this compelling, richly researched novel, author Andrew Joyce tells a story of determination and grit as the Mahoney clan fights to gain a foothold in America. From the first page to the last, fans of Edward Rutherfurd and W. Michael Gear will enjoy this riveting, historically accurate tale of adventure, endurance, and hope.

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.

AmazonUK | AmazonUS

 

 

Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT #HistoricalFiction MAHONEY by Andrew Joyce @huckfinn76

Today’s team review is from Terry, she blogs here https://terrytylerbookreviews.blogspot.co.uk/

Terry has been reading Mahoney by Andrew Joyce

4 out of 5 stars

I adore family sagas through the generations, and have a great interest in American history of the last two hundred years, so I leapt on this book when I saw it on the review team list.

The book is split into three sections: Devin, the 19 year old from Ireland eager to make his fortune in America, his son, Dillon, who sets out to travel west, and David, the privileged son of Dillon, whose fortunes take a different turn during the Depression.

I’ll start by saying that a great strength of this book is the dialogue, which never falters in its quality, and is the main reason why the characterisation is so good.  I was also most impressed by the research that had gone into the book; it is clear, throughout, that Mr Joyce has a great understanding of the peoples of each time and place in the novel.

I adored the first part, about Devin; I looked forward to getting back to it each time I had to put it down.  Devin’s route to America is depicted so colourfully that I was completely engrossed.  I was disappointed when his section ended; I wanted to carry on reading about him.  I liked the next part, about Dillon’s adventures in ‘Wild West’ Wyoming, but, although the book continued to be well-written, admirably researched, and flowed so well, I was less convinced by Dillon as a character.

My interested was piqued again by the start of David’s section – I loved reading about the spoilt, self-centred young man who cared nothing for his family or the struggles lived through by his father and grandfather.  His first experiences as the Depression hit kept me engrossed, too, but after he changed his way of thinking, I became less convinced by him.  I think what I was not so keen on was the way in which Dillon and David kept bumping into strangers, on the road and in bars, and everywhere else, who offered them the chance to change their lives for the better.  Devin’s life seemed more realistic, whereas Dillon and David appeared to fall into one piece of great luck after another.  I was also less keen on David’s section because so much of it was dialogue-led, which is not a preference of mine; this is not a criticism, just a personal preference.

Despite the aspects about which I wasn’t so sure, it’s a most entertaining book.  I think it has real value as a fictional history of America the period between 1846 – the 1930s, even if I felt some of it was rushed through; there is a lot of material for one novel.  Mr Joyce can certainly write; I have just downloaded another of his books, Resolution.  I was also impressed by how he wrote Devin and David in the third person, but Dillon in the first; this was absolutely the right choice, and a clever one.

I’d most certainly recommend this novel for lovers of family sagas through the ages, particularly if you have an interest in American history.

 

In this compelling, richly researched novel, author Andrew Joyce tells a story of determination and grit as the Mahoney clan fights to gain a foothold in America. From the first page to the last, fans of Edward Rutherfurd and W. Michael Gear will enjoy this riveting, historically accurate tale of adventure, endurance, and hope.

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.

AmazonUK | AmazonUS