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St. Patrick's Day: 5 great books that celebrate Ireland
What should you read on St. Patrick's Day? If you're hoping to celebrate Ireland with a book in hand, the hardest part will be figuring out which one, as the Emerald Isle has long been a wildly prolific source of inspiration to writers. And so to my earlier list of 10 best books about Ireland (which I still stand by), I can easily add five more.
1. Shannon, by Frank Delaney
There must be something uniquely therapeutic about a sojourn in Ireland. Because memoirists (Kevin O'Hara in "The Last of the Donkey Pilgrims" and John McCarthy in "A Ghost Upon Your Path"), poets (Fred Marchant), and novelist Frank Delaney have all seen the land as a place to heal the ills of war. In "Shannon," an American priest travels Ireland's Shannon River in search of his family roots, hoping to find peace after experiencing the atrocities of WWI. In Ireland, however, he bears witness to the country's descent into civil war.
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