When We Were Lovers All Irish Stories of Love, Loss and Laughter

William Roe

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Why I wrote this book

I wrote this book because I wanted to explore the human heart; the men and women who live in my stories love and laugh in spite of life’s tribulations. My stories are entertaining, lively and thought-provoking. The reader will enjoy the time he or she spends in the worlds that I have created and will know a little more about what makes us human. If you enjoy the short stories of Joseph O’Connor, Evelyn Conlon and William Trevor the Willaim thinks you should enjoy his.

Synopsis

Set in Portnabawd, an Irish town suffering in the dismal 1950s and 60s, When We Were Lovers All is about people in all their maddening complexity. The stories capture the zeitgeist of mid-twentieth century Ireland and illustrate the capacity of the human spirit to transcend the most repressive of environments. They show that love, laughter, sorrow and joy can bubble underneath the permafrost of clericalism and official conservatism. The police and clergy conspire to rid the town of Nelly, the local prostitute, but they reckon without her neighbours, who have their own way of defending their street. An ambitious poor boy making his way in Dublin falls for a rich girl, but will small town snobbery kill their love? A burly blacksmith brings home a wife to live in a house that he shares with his gay brother. A widow and a married man breach the community's moral boundaries and incur the wrath of the Church. A pretty English girl drifts into Portnabawd and falls for Seamus, a shy, lumbering farmer, but will she drift out as easily as she drifted in? Not even the Irish Sea can stop rock n' roll ...and the trouble it brings to the town. Sean O'Ree, American gangster, comes home to complete some unfinished business left over from the Irish Civil War. Two schoolboy victims of sadism and paedophilia become abusers themselves. Rural electrification is going to light up every corner of Molly Akins' candle-lit house, but shadows have their uses; they hide secrets that should remain hidden. Winnie, carrying a light purse, brings her children on an August Bank Holiday train excursion to the seaside and tries heroically to make her money last. Babby, a mentally ill man, and Tim, a youth suffering from dwarfism, become friends ...until prejudice raises its ugly head.

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