Outskirts Press, INC.

IS GENEALOGY DESTINY?

In 1918, as Chicago copes with an influenza pandemic, a World War, and the Cubs loss in the World Series, ten-year-old Jimmy Cullerton’s ma surprisingly sends him with his oldest brother to the South Side to collect support money from their estranged father. Slighted by his dad, Jimmy vows never to be like him and learns from his brother the need to bury the past. But he also discovers family he never knew existed.

A century later, Jimmy’s retired son Kevin - a retired music teacher living in Door County, Wisconsin - embarks on a quest to understand his father’s secret life. He discovers his rogue grandfather and the depth of his Irish family roots in Chicago’s history. Along the way, secrets from Kevin’s own past connect him with a woman he hasn’t seen since she was an infant and force him to relive and reexamine his relationship with his closest childhood friend Thomas and Thomas’ sister Pat. As personal memories and family shadows merge, Kevin must reconcile their meanings in order to decide who he was and what he wants to be.

In the 2017 HAL PRIZE competition, the July, 1959 chapter (as a short story titled Master Link) was awarded 2nd Place. Fiction Judge David Haynes wrote: “...so much is packed into a small space, with each gesture and image offering something important and useful to the fiction. A small beautiful gem.”