Award-winning author Sebastian Barry will be at the BookMark in Neptune Beach Tuesday, Sept. 19 at 7 p.m. to sign copies of his new novel, “Days Without End.”
The story features Thomas McNulty, a 17-year-old boy who fled the Great Famine in Ireland and signed up for the U.S. Army in the 1850s. With his brother in arms, John Cole, McNulty goes on to fight in the Indian Wars against the Sioux and the Yurok and ultimately in the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, the men find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see.
Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Barry's latest work is an intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, and overall a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history.
“He explores the savagery of early Irish American history and the genocide against Native Americans, drawing parallels with colonialism and famine in Ireland,” said Justine Jordan, editor at The Guardian. “The novel combines visceral immediacy, historical sweep and profound insight. It’s a crowning achievement to an extraordinary literary career.”
Barry has won the Costa Novel Award for “Days Without End” and the Costa Book Award for “The Secret Scripture.” He has also won the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year Award and the Walter Scott Prize. His work has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Barry is the author of six previous novels and lives in Ireland.
The BookMark is located at 220 1st Street in Neptune Beach.
