New book dawns from Dolla author

A WRITER who grew up in Dolla during the Second World War has penned a second book about his childhood memories.

 

Edward Forde Hickey was sent to live with his family in Dolla to escape the German bombings of London in 1940. The profound effect of spending his formative years in rural Tipperary inspired him to record some of his reminisces in last year's 'The Early Morning Light'.

 

Now Edward is back with a new book looking at life in Dolla during the latter half of the 40s. Again his focus is “Rookery Rally”, a place where children played at Mountisland.

 

In 'A New Day Dawning', the author tells fictional tales of young folk coming of age in what he describes as “an unashamed homage to a past age – a celebration of rural life in mid-twentieth century Ireland as opposed to the pandemonium often experienced in today’s fast-moving cities”. The book follows a group of children living in a hillside community throughout their formative years as their personal beliefs and characteristics develop.

 

Playfully told through Edward's take on the colloquialisms of the time and place, the book is flecked with humorous stories. One, for example, features lads engaging in tug-o-war contests “after feasting on several glasses of The Black Doctor”. Another tells of a poor lad who got stung by a bumble bee on “the tip of his private credentials”.

 

There's another story about a young fella with innocent ambitions of meeting a “damsel” to “chastise her body and roll her in his delicate arms in some shady nook for the whole afternoon”. He arrives in and marvels at the goings on in “The Roaring Town”, where our protagonist goes in search of damsels at the fair and ends up being taken advantage of by one of them.

 

The author shows us alternative acts of good and evil as the children in his stories struggle to set their own moral compass. For instance, they walk three miles to bring back a puppy for an old man left brokenhearted by the death of his young hound during a hunt. But not long afterwards the older children accompany their father and uncles on a hunt and share in the act of killing foxes and their cubs. Later on we see the younger children helping to drown a tinker’s pup. They then turn over a new leaf and promise to be good after a stern fire-and-brimstone sermon during the mission.

 

A retired school headmaster and inspector, and father of three sons, Edward lives in Kent with his wife. He has a small farm in Dolla, which he regularly visits, and he has relations living all over the Nenagh hinterland, from Portroe to Kilkeary and the Silvermines.

 

Edward will be in Nenagh this Saturday, June 25th, to sign copies of 'A New Day Dawning' at The Bookshop on Friar St from 3-5pm. He will also give some short readings from his new book. The author will also be interviewed on Tipp FM this Friday at 11.30am.