Patrick O’Keeffe is an Irish-born author whose work includes the highly acclaimed 2006 collection The Hill Road and the 2014 novel The Visitors, both released by Viking Press. Born in 1964 in Ireland's County Limerick, O'Keeffe moved to the United States in the early 1990's, where he eventually earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Kentucky and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. He currently teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Ohio University. His work has been honored wtih several prestigious awards, including the Story Prize for fiction in 2005.
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The Hill RoadFour NovellasFrom"The Hill Road"
—Albert was down below in the trenches in Verdun, was how he started it.—Faith, he was, with rats crawling all over him and soldiers dead and dying and screaming beside him in all the smoke and the blood and the corpses piling up, but Albert came back to us alive and in one piece but not too long after he was back he happened to be walking from Powers one night and the devil appeared to him in the shape of a ten-foot pig, stepped from behind a tree on Garvey’s ditch on the hill road—
The Hill Road:Four Novellas -
The Hill RoadFour NovellasFrom"Her Black Mantilla"
That Friday evening, Davie went to confession for the last time. He told the priest he would not ever pray at his father’s grave, and there was no more to say about it. He stood and left the confessional before the priest had a chance to say a word. Outside, it had begun to rain. Davie stood in the doorway of the church and pulled the cap from his pocket and put it on. He buttoned his coat up, pushed his hands into his pockets, and walked across the churchyard to the statue of Saint Joseph. He stood at the base of the statue and gazed up, but he could not make out the saint’s features against the dark. Davie held his hand out, was about to touch Saint Joseph’s feet, but he drew his hand away, and turned his back on the statue and walked into the rain and the dark.
The Hill Road:Four Novellas -
The Hill RoadFour NovellasFrom"That’s Our Name"
Everyone knew my father was a thief: It was a joke amongst the farmers when they gathered at the creamery, where my brother and I used to stand around in the summer, hoping to get a day’s work making hay for one of those farmers, who knew if a spade went missing from their dairy house overnight, or a hay fork disappeared, or a bag of grain was not to be found that it was my father, Jack Gleason, who did it.
The Hill Road:Four Novellas
“A remarkable achievement . . . There is a wonderful Irish music running through O’Keeffe’s prose, yet his tales of ordinary rural life in twentieth-century Ireland are unsparing and never sentimental.” —The Baltimore Sun [on The Hill Road]
“Handsome, subtle narratives by an exquisitely talented Irish-born writer.” —Elle [on The Hill Road]
“Lush and evocative . . . a dreamlike collection.” —The New York Times Book Review [on The Hill Road]
“Delivers a devastating emotional wallop . . . The novel is heedless of time, meandering back and forth through James Dwyer’s life and the lives of his forbears . . . We learn, gradually, of the inextricable bonds between the Lyons family and the Dwyers back in County Limerick, about the affairs and tragedies of aunts, fathers, brothers, sisters . . . by the time all is revealed, the reader is captivated and moved.” —Publishers Weekly [on The Visitors]
