.
Breda Joy.
A KERRY journalist and author is about to release her latest book, ‘Eat the Moon’.
Killarney native Breda Joy has already published three books, ‘Brian Crowley: Against the Odds, A Biography’; ‘Hidden Kerry, The Keys to the Kingdom’ and ‘The Wit & Wisdom of Kerry’.
Now she turns her attention to fiction with a story set in Cork around the time of the 1969 moon landing.
A winner in the ESB National Media Awards (1997), Breda works as a regional journalist with Kerry’s Eye and previously with The Kerryman.
Continued below…
.
She is a regular contributor to Radio Kerry and features on RTE Radio and television occasionally.
She has been short listed for the Francis MacManus Short Story Competition (2011); long listed for the RTE Guide Penguin Ireland Short Story (2012); a winner in the inaugural, Trócaire/Poetry Ireland Award (2012), and a winner in the Kerry County County Council One Act Play Competition (2005).
Here’s the plot; Kieran O’Mahony rides away to the hunt on a powerful black horse, his mother is gripped by a sense of foreboding.
He is a rising hurling star, with the world at his feet and one spirited local girl in his heart. His grandmother, however, has read a frightening premonition in the tea leaves.
Already several things out of the ordinary have occurred that summer. First, there is the arrival of Tamara, a young London cousin – minus her voice, which she lost following a traumatic event. Then, in the same week of July 1969, the family are caught up in the magic of the Apollo moon landing.
It’s a giant step for mankind indeed but doesn’t help Tamara to adjust to the already alien world of the Cork farm. Mute, she must cope with the unfamiliar idiom and way of seeing the world, while her cousin Sally resents the attention paid to her.
Then all their lives are shattered by a blind act of fate that threatens to tear the family asunder.
Like the Apollo astronauts, Kieran and his family begin a voyage away from the familiar. Their journey back from the dark side of the moon involves one exceptional moon-silver horse, the bonds of family, the wisdom of age and the passionate loyalty of youth.
The book is out through Poolbeg Trade on September 1 for €14.99.
