These short stories are set primarily in the farmland of County Antrim in Northern Ireland during the author’s youth in the nineteen forties and fifties, but some feature Scots-Irish in America and England during that same period.
County Antrim has strong residual connections to Scotland that are reflected in the manner of speech and in the social values that the author experienced during his youth — hard work, religious belief and valuing family connections. Long before television entered the home, family and neighborhood get-togethers were common, often around the hearth-fire, especially in the winter months. During those times it was common for older members to mention their escapades in not just the Second World War but the First World War and even the Boer War.
The very human lives of these wholesome people, their sorrow, happiness, humor and futility, are picturesquely captured in the author’s sensitive, homespun stories.
