Kirjahaku

'From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night, Lord, deliver us.' That unique prayer is at the heart this 41,000 word novel of magical realism wrapped around the half-forgotten legacy of San Francisco's notorious Irish Hill and descendants who still live in the adjacent Dogpatch neighborhood. Irish Hill is a story of love lost and reclaimed for Jerry Larkin and his childhood sweetheart, the fiery Mae Bannon. It's a story of Irish cops like Jerry's father 'Sarge' Larkin and street corner justice. And it's the story of whiskey-swigging former golf hustler and banshee whisperer Granny Cavanaugh. This is also a brief history of Irish Hill itself, a very special place that was literally bulldozed out of existence a century ago and yet maintains a powerful hold on the descendants of those few thousand immigrants of Irish Hill.There's hooliganism and heroics, beat cops, beatniks, bookies and barflies aplenty as the story follows the intertwined lives and loves of three generations of the Larkin, Bannon and O'Boyle clans. And it's the story of one particularly unpleasant banshee named Mathilda who fled from her old world exile to the New World and wreaked havoc from the notorious 'Blue Mud Wars' fought in the mud, beer and blood on Irish Hill for control of the brothels and beer halls.

In the predawn hours of December 12, 1975, an arsonist poured gasoline on the stairs of the Gartland Apartments and touched off one of the worst arson fires in San Francisco history. The brick tenement, riddled with dozens of health and safety code violations and under a two-year-old condemnation order from the City, went up like a "five-story torch," according to first responders. By the time the fire was out,14 people were dead, dozens of SF Firemen and tenants were critically injured, and more than a hundred low-income residents were left homeless. This novella is based on that real event that shocked San Francisco as soon through there eyes of three fictional characters: teenage Rory who is searching for his alcoholic scofflaw father who may, or may not, have died in the fire, the professional arsonist and his accomplice known only as "The Torch" and veteran SFPD detective "Whitey" Larkin who has chased the Torch for years. The Gartland fire arson case has never been solved (assumed to be one of a several 'renovation fires' that raced through the low-income apartment buildings) and more than four decades later the arsonist-for-profit remains unknown. This fictionalized account of the true event tries to answer some of those questions.