St. Patrick’s Day
A Love Story
St. Patrick’s Day opens in March 1968 at the rectory of Blessed Sacrament parish in Chevy Chase, DC, with Fr. Joseph Hara struggling with his weekly homily. A parishioner’s son has been killed in Vietnam and it is time to say something about it all. Unable to gather his thoughts, he distracts himself with his weekly mail, first being an invitation to Mary Riley’s St. Patrick’s Day party this coming on Saturday.
Born in Ireland in 1902 and settled with her family in Washington in ’08, Mary has run Hennessey Construction since the death of her husband Paddy in World War II. Such was the strength and closeness of their friendship - Joseph Hara, Paddy and Mary - that she has moved her family from the Southwest quadrant of Washington to Chevy Chase, MD, to be closer to him.
Weary of leadership of the family business, Mary is looking for a new place in her world and a new time in her life. Her oldest son, John, is struggling with his son’s autism as her only daughter remains estranged since Mary’s refusal to bless her marriage to a protestant suitor of a decade past. Mary Riley’s truest comfort is her youngest son, Kevin, a social worker in Appalachia whose visit and heroism over this St. Patrick’s Day weekend changes the lives of them all.
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The Swampoodle Trilogy (Swampoodle-1936, St. Patrick’s Day-1968, Mount Olivet-1993) tracks and speaks to the Irish in America. Out of the famine and into the history of the place, it is the Irish as integral to the continuing creation and reality of the American phenomenon itself, its purpose and validation.
“From a place of oppression and want,
we came to a land of freedom and plenty,
and we made it better.”
Note: The books of the Trilogy underwent a refresh on the August 2020 launch of the new website. It is recommended that purchases be made from Amazon new stocks only.
