Kevin Barry — The Heart in Winter

We're thrilled to welcome Kevin Barry to the bookshop to launch the publication of his first historical novel, The Heart in Winter. 25 years ago, Barry travelled to Butte, Montana with an idea for a novel. He recorded the Irish experience of the city and learned about the Irish miners who migrated there to work in the mines in 1880s. A quarter of a century later, protagonists Polly and Tom emerged in his mind and The Heart in Winter was born. Barry will be in conversation with writer and programmer Sasha de Buyl.

This event will take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience, as well as a livestream for attendees watching from home. There will be a signing after the event.

In-person vouchers can be redeemed on the night of the event against a single copy of The Heart in Winter – we will have a list of attendees with vouchers to be redeemed. Please note that only one voucher can be redeemed per book. Livestream vouchers are valid until the day after the event and can be redeemed on the website against a single copy of The Heart in Winter.

About The Heart in Winter:

October, 1891. Butte, Montana. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers.

Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and balladmaker, but also a doper, a drinker and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington.

A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho. Briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunsmen are soon in hot pursuit of the lovers, and closing in fast . . .

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