My Father's Wake

Author: Kevin Toolis
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306921456
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
An intimate, lyrical look at the ancient rite of the Irish wake--and the Irish way of overcoming our fear of death Death is a whisper for most of us. Instinctively we feel we should dim the lights, pull the curtains, and speak softly. But on a remote island off the coast of Ireland's County Mayo, death has a louder voice. Each day, along with reports of incoming Atlantic storms, the local radio runs a daily roll call of the recently departed. The islanders go in great numbers, young and old alike, to be with their dead. They keep vigil with the corpse and the bereaved company through the long hours of the night. They dig the grave with their own hands and carry the coffin on their own shoulders. The islanders cherish the dead--and amid the sorrow, they celebrate life, too. In My Father's Wake, acclaimed author and award-winning filmmaker Kevin Toolis unforgettably describes his own father's wake and explores the wider history and significance of this ancient and eternal Irish ritual. Perhaps we, too, can all find a better way to deal with our mortality -- by living and loving as the Irish do.

My Father's Wake

Author: Kevin Toolis
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1474605257
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
Death is a whisper in the Anglo-Saxon world. But on a remote island, off the coast of County Mayo, it has a louder voice. The local radio station runs a thrice-daily roll-call of the recently departed. The islanders keep vigil with the corpse and share in the sorrow of the bereaved. The living and the dead are bound together in the oldest rite of humanity. In My Father's Wake, Kevin Toolis gives an intimate, eye-witness account of the death and wake of his father, celebrating the spiritual depth of the Irish Wake and asking if we too can find a better way to deal with our mortality, by living and loving in the acceptance of death.

Into My Father's Wake

Author: Eric Best
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781449970383
Category : Pacific Ocean
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
"Into my father's wake records a solo, 5,000-mile Pacific journey aboard the 47-foot ketch Feo, in which the author attempts to put his powerful father to rest once and for all"--Back cover

The Wake

Author: Paul Kingsnorth
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555979076
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Book Description
"A work that is as disturbing as it is empathetic, as beautiful as it is riveting." —Eimear McBride, New Statesman In the aftermath of the Norman Invasion of 1066, William the Conqueror was uncompromising and brutal. English society was broken apart, its systems turned on their head. What is little known is that a fractured network of guerrilla fighters took up arms against the French occupiers. In The Wake, a postapocalyptic novel set a thousand years in the past, Paul Kingsnorth brings this dire scenario back to us through the eyes of the unforgettable Buccmaster, a proud landowner bearing witness to the end of his world. Accompanied by a band of like-minded men, Buccmaster is determined to seek revenge on the invaders. But as the men travel across the scorched English landscape, Buccmaster becomes increasingly unhinged by the immensity of his loss, and their path forward becomes increasingly unclear. Written in what the author describes as "a shadow tongue"—a version of Old English updated so as to be understandable to the modern reader—The Wake renders the inner life of an Anglo-Saxon man with an accuracy and immediacy rare in historical fiction. To enter Buccmaster's world is to feel powerfully the sheer strangeness of the past. A tale of lost gods and haunted visions, The Wake is both a sensational, gripping story and a major literary achievement.

Rebel Hearts

Author: Kevin Toolis
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1250088739
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Book Description
For ten years Kevin Toolis investigated the lives of the IRA soldiers who wage a secret battle against the British State. His journeys took him from the back kitchens of Belfast, where men joked while making two-thousand-pound bombs, to prisons for interviews with men serving life sentences, and to the graveyards where mourners weep. Each chapter explores a world where history, faith, and human savagery determine life and death. At once moving and harrowing,Rebel Hearts is the most authoritative and insightful book ever written on the IRA.

Wake Me When You Leave

Author: Elisa Donovan
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
ISBN: 0738768383
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Book Description
Love, Grief, and Healing in Hollywood and Beyond After prominent roles in Clueless; Sabrina, the Teenage Witch; and Beverly Hills 90210; Elisa's career was on the fast track. Until her show is unexpectedly cancelled, her relationship ends, and her father is diagnosed with terminal cancer. This book chronicles Elisa's journey out of despair and heartbreak, with awe-inspiring visitations, dreams, and inexplicable synchronicities that could only be her father letting her know that he's watching over her from the afterlife. Sometimes the universe sends us on a journey that we didn't know we needed. By sharing the lessons and challenges that the universe sent to her, Elisa inspires those who are learning to let go after a loss so they can live again with authenticity, humor, and hope.

When We Wake

Author: Karen Healey
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0316215007
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 182

Book Description
My name is Tegan Oglietti, and on the last day of my first lifetime, I was so, so happy. Sixteen-year-old Tegan is just like every other girl living in 2027--she's happiest when playing the guitar, she's falling in love for the first time, and she's joining her friends to protest the wrongs of the world: environmental collapse, social discrimination, and political injustice. But on what should have been the best day of Tegan's life, she dies--and wakes up a hundred years in the future, locked in a government facility with no idea what happened. Tegan is the first government guinea pig to be cryonically frozen and successfully revived, which makes her an instant celebrity--even though all she wants to do is try to rebuild some semblance of a normal life. But the future isn't all she hoped it would be, and when appalling secrets come to light, Tegan must make a choice: Does she keep her head down and survive, or fight for a better future? Award-winning author Karen Healey has created a haunting, cautionary tale of an inspiring protagonist living in a not-so-distant future that could easily be our own.

How to Fake an Irish Wake

Author: Eliza Watson
Publisher: Elizabeth Watson
ISBN: 1950786013
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 203

Book Description
FROM USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR AND FAMILY HISTORIAN ELIZA WATSON! "This is a sparkling tale of Irish ways, mysteries and friendship." —5-Stars "Love, love, loved this book! I wish I could give it 5k stars!" —5 Stars, Becky on Goodreads It’s been a rough year for 26-year-old Mags Murray. First she learns that her dad isn’t her biological father, a secret her mother took to her grave three years earlier. Then her beloved Irish grandmother passes away at Christmas while Mags is visiting her from the States. Now Mags must host her grandmother’s wake and sell her cottage. A cottage filled with cherished memories. A cottage Mags inherited but her odd jobs won’t enable her to keep. Shortly after the funeral, a young man, Finn O’Brien, arrives at the cottage with an old photograph. Finn believes the boys in the photo are a clue to his father’s identity. Mags can sympathize with him, and because she often helped her genealogist grandmother uncover skeletons in people’s closets, including hers, she agrees to assist Finn. But searching for Finn’s father stirs up trouble. Finn is in a near-fatal car crash that wasn’t an accident. So Mags and her childhood friend Biddy McCarthy investigate why someone wants to prevent Finn from finding his father. Questioning the quirky locals proves a wee bit difficult as several of the suspects were victims of Mags and Biddy’s childhood shenanigans. It might take a fake Irish wake to reveal Finn’s father and the would-be murderer. But what if the two turn out to be the same person? **Genealogy research tips included!** Other readers of Eliza Watson’s books enjoyed books by: Addison Moore, Alyssa Maxwell, Angie Fox, Carlene O'Connor, Cate Martin, Catie Murphy, Ellery Adams, Fiona Grace, Jana Deleon, Janet Evanovich, Joanne Fluke, Kennedy Layne, Laura Durham, Lee Strauss, Leighann Dobbs, Paige Shelton, Rhys Bowen, Shanna Swendson, Sheila Connolly, and Tonya Kappes. Topics: Cozy Mysteries Amateur Sleuth, Mysteries Amateur Sleuth, International Cozy Mysteries, Cozy Mysteries Women Sleuths, Genealogy, Family History, Ancestry, Family Trees, Fiction Set in Ireland, Humorous Cozy Mystery, Humorous Beach Read, International Mysteries, Chick Lit Mystery, Friendship Fiction, Witty Fiction, Humorous Fiction, Cozy Mysteries Set in Europe, Cozy Mysteries, Funny Beach Read, Cozy Mysteries How To, Cozy Mysteries like Stephanie Plum, Cozy Mystery Series, Cozy Mysteries in Ireland, Cozy Mystery Funny, Cozy Mystery Amateur Detective, Mysteries like Stephanie Plum

Before You Wake

Author: Erick Erickson
Publisher: Center Point
ISBN: 9781683246060
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"Ten letters--featuring a wonderful mix of the practical, inspirational, and spiritual--about life's enduring values, based on a viral essay Erickson wrote for his children after he and his wife both faced grave medical situations"--

In Byron's Wake

Author: Miranda Seymour
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681779366
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 445

Book Description
In 1815, the clever and courted Annabella Milbanke married the notorious and brilliant Lord Byron. Just one year later, she fled, taking with her their baby daughter, Ada Lovelace. Byron himself escaped into exile and died as a revolutionary hero in 1824. Brought up by a mother who became one of the most progressive reformers of Victorian England, Byron’s little girl was introduced to mathematics as a means of calming her wild spirits. As a child invalid, Ada dreamed of building a steam-driven flying horse. As an exuberant and boldly unconventional young woman, she amplified her explanations of Charles Babbage’s unbuilt calculating engine to predict the dawn of the modern computer age.During her life, Lady Byron was praised as a paragon of virtue; within ten years of her death, she was vilified as a disgrace to her sex. Well over a hundred years later, Annabella Milbanke is still perceived as a prudish wife and cruelly controlling mother. But her hidden devotion to Byron and her tender ambitions for his mercurial, brilliant daughter reveal a deeply complex but unexpectedly sympathetic personality.Drawing on fascinating new material, Seymour reveals the ways in which Byron, long after his death, continued to shape the lives and reputations both of his wife and his daughter.