Cork singer turned author's epic love story set in Famine

A talented songwriter, pianist, and storyteller, Cork man Cathal Dunne has now released a book - an epic love story that is years in the making.

Cathal has lived in the U.S for decades, but made the trip back home to Leeside in May to launch his anthem, Cork My Home, a song he wrote to inspire our Cork hurlers and to demonstrate his passion for the city where he was born and raised.

Now a hectic few months have culminated in his book, Athenry - A Famine Tale Of Love And Survival being published. It is not his first foray into publishing either.

“I had 47 rejections before my first novel, Put Your Rosary Beads Away Ma, was published, says Cathal laughing.

This erstwhile singer, however, does not know about rejection when it comes to his music.

“ Cork My Home went down well and it got a great reception and a lot of airtime on the radio here,” he says. “The song was like a legacy for Uncle Jack!”

Cathal is referring to his uncle, late Taoiseach and hurling great Jack Lynch.

Cathal, well used to singing and writing love songs, and who represented Ireland in the Eurovision in 1979 with Happy Man, has penned an epic love story.

“ Athenry - A Famine Tale Of Love And Survival was a labour of love,” he says.

“It was a project that I undertook during the covid lockdown when I had time on my hands to research The Great Famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1852. I was thinking about it for a long time.

“I wanted the book to be historically accurate, and I came across a trove of Australian history including daily journals about famine ships and convict ships,” says Cathal.

“Mercier Press appointed a famine expert to go through the book when I finished it.

“I spent the most intense week with Michelle O’Mahony from Dunmanway, who went through page by page to ensure the details, dates, and places, for instance, were accurate.”

The Great Famine is a big part of our history and our heritage.

“We all know, and learnt about, the terrible devastation, the thousands of Irish people who perished during those dark years and the thousands of people who boarded the ‘famine ships’ hoping to survive and live in lands across the ocean,” says Cathal.

His book is a novel breathing vivid life into the era, offering a heart-rending story of love, loss and resilience.

As its protagonists journey from the stench of rotting potatoes in the fields of Galway to far-flung towns across continents, Liam and Maire of Athenry endure unimaginable hardship, carrying the reader across oceans and cultures bound by hope and longing for home.

With prose as lyrical as the ballads he sings, Cathal has created characters who linger long after the final page. The novel has shades of the Titanic saga.

“I visualised the book as a screenplay,” says Cathal. “There is interest in the possibility of making Athenry into a film. Noel Pearson (a Dublin film producer) called me and said he loved the book and would like to do a mini-series if it sells.”

The selling point is that telling a story is part of Cathal’s identity.

“Drawing on my passion for Irish history and culture, it was only a matter of time before I put pen to paper and let my imagination take flight,” says Cathal.

“My initial inspiration came from Pete St John’s iconic song, The Fields Of Athenry. A song widely beloved by the Irish at home and abroad, it has resonated around the world and is synonymous with the Irish diaspora,” says Cathal.

“In three short verses, The Fields of Athenry has captured a watershed moment in the lives of so many Irish families.

“After the Famine, nothing was quite the same and those who survived, survived against all odds,” says Cathal.

“That song tells the story of a pauper who stole food from his landlord to feed his starving children during the Great Famine of the mid-1840s. Found guilty, he was transported to the Penal Colony in Botany Bay Australia” adds Cathal, who is well versed in that significant period of Irish history.

“Like others of his kind, he did not return,” says Cathal.

“It is estimated that over 164,000 convicts, both Irish and English, men and women, were transported to the penal colonies in Australia between the years 1788 and 1886.

“Today, Athenry is a medieval town 16 miles east of Galway city, attractive to visitors for its castle, stone walls, fortifications and Anglo-Norman street plans.”

Cathal’s interest in the plight of the Irish during the Great Famine prompted him to dig deep to write Athenry - A Famine Tale Of Love And Survival.

“During my research for the book, I came to realise that because of the huge collective and intergenerational trauma in Ireland at the time of the Famine and the immediate aftermath, perhaps even to present day, that the plight of the victims, their experience of hardship and despair - to a certain extent - has lain unexplored.

“Daily life and love stories were forgotten in the search for food, and in later years, politicians and historians tended to focus less on individual victims of the Famine and more on the debates of recounting history,” says Cathal.

“The daily life of Famine victims was beset by hunger - yet they watched the majority of foodstuffs which could have halved the rising mortality rates leave the country as cargo in ships bound for imperial Britain.”

Cathal says his second novel is a tribute to the resilience, strength, love of family and forbearance of the Irish in the face of overwhelming adversity.

“Yes, it is all those things, given the uniqueness of the situation in he mid-1840s,” he says.

“It is reflected in the lives of two families equally, terribly affected by twists and turns of history and historical moments, the Penal Laws, land subdivision and of course The Great Irish Famine, or its historically accurate term; An Gorta Móir, the Great Irish Hunger.”

What is Cathal’s hope for the book and its readers?

“My fervent hope is each reader, especially those of Irish heritage, will see elements of their ancestors in its characters, as I strive to bring the emigration experience of so many together in one story,” says Cathal.

“For others, it is simply an epic love story that defies the odds.

“This year, 2025, marks the 180th anniversary of the cataclysmic blight to Ireland in the autumn of 1845. My book is a testament to the memory of all who endured so much.”

And like Cathal’s ‘Cork anthem’, Cork My Home, the story of the Great Hunger will serve as a legacy to his uncle, Jack Lynch.

Athenry - A Tale Of Love And Survival, by Cathal Dunne, published by Mercier Press, is launching at Cork City Library on August 23.