{"id":8226,"date":"2019-10-30T07:44:24","date_gmt":"2019-10-30T11:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8226"},"modified":"2019-10-30T07:44:24","modified_gmt":"2019-10-30T11:44:24","slug":"fishermen-of-kerity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8226","title":{"rendered":"****Fishermen of K\u00e9rity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"fishing<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Peter James Quirk \u2013 In 1959, when Peter James Quirk\u2019s protagonist Tommy Kiernan goes in search of his past, he finds a more complicated and thrilling story than he\u2019d ever imagined. Only 19 and an American college student from upstate New York, he was born in the English fishing village of Brixham to an elegant French mother and Irish father, now separated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two events start his quest. One night recently, a deliberately set fire destroyed Tommy and his mother\u2019s home, and not long afterward, his mother is killed when her car plunges from the mountain highway into a ravine. Suspicion arises that these two events are not unrelated, and Tommy decides he must find out who murdered her. As she is not the type to develop enemies, he believes the killer is someone from her mysterious past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clues to her life in Brittany might lie in her beautiful artwork.\nTommy finds her journal, sketchbook, and a bit of shocking information. When\nBreton fishermen helped her escape the Nazis in 1940, she was already pregnant,\nwhich means the big Irishman, Francis Thomas Kiernan, isn\u2019t his father after\nall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His mother\u2019s painting, Fishermen of K\u00e9rity<\/em>, suggests\nwhere to start in trying to fill in the details of her life. Tommy travels to\nK\u00e9rity on the Breton coast, hoping to meet some of Jackie\u2019s long-ago friends. Did\nany of them survived the war, do they know who his birth father was, and will\nthey talk to him about any of this? Author Quirk does an excellent job evoking\nthe Breton community as the threat of war materializes into invasion,\noccupation, and retribution. It is a sad, dangerous time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quirk, born and educated in England, now lives in the United States. The knowledge of the sea he gained as a fisherman and with the British Merchant Marine gives the book\u2019s scenes on the Breton docks and sailing the French coastline a nice realism. While I enjoyed the historical content that makes up most of the book, the scenes set in 1959 Vermont\u2014Tommy\u2019s romance and his clumsy methods for finding his mother\u2019s killer\u2014are less convincing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a short novel (169 pages), quickly read, and while I had the aforementioned quibble with the 1959 story, on the whole Quirk\u2019s writing style is clear and enjoyable. He has created a memorable tale in a colorful, high-stakes setting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Photo of fishermen’s nets: Lisa Redfern for Pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Peter James Quirk \u2013 In 1959, when Peter James Quirk\u2019s protagonist Tommy Kiernan goes in search of his past, he finds a more complicated and thrilling story than he\u2019d ever imagined. Only 19 and an American college student from … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****Fishermen of K\u00e9rity - Does a woman's past in occupied France hold clues to her murder two decades later? Her son is determined to unravel the mystery.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,266,3,126,32],"tags":[446],"class_list":["post-8226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-history","category-mystery","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-world-war-ii"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Fishing-Nets.jpg?fit=210%2C340&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-28G","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8228,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8226\/revisions\/8228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}