Author Peter Behrens shares Irish tales on St. Patrick's Day

BELFAST - On Sunday, March 17, from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., Left Bank Books will celebrate St. Patrick's Day by hosting fiction writer Peter Behrens, who will share from his deep well of Irish tales and sign his most recent book, The O'Briens, just published in paperback. Left Bank Books is located at 109 Church Street in downtown Belfast. 

Behrens' new book is epic in its scope as it follows one Irish-Canadian family through big moments in a modernizing North America. Joe O'Brien is a fiercely compelling character—a backwoods boy, railroad magnate, and a brooding soul—who exchanges the isolation and poverty of Canadian wilderness for a share in the dazzling possibilities of the twentieth century. The O'Briens is a big book— Irish and Catholic and generational—that captures and haunts the reader in the spirit of Angela's Ashes or East of Eden.

This will be Behrens' second visit to the bookshop, the first being in 2006 when he signed The Law of Dreams, a recipient of Canada's Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction. His other works include a collection of short stories called Night Driving. Behrens has received numerous honors for his writing, including a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University's Creative Writing Program.

The March 17 talk is the third in Left Bank's "Winter Lyceum" series and is free and open to the public. The next program is scheduled for Sunday, April 7, when Michael Erard, author of Babel No More, will talk about "Amazing Polyglots: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners." Seating is limited, so reservations are recommended. To reserve a seat for the St. Patrick's Day program, request a signed copy of The O'Briens or The Law of Dreams, or for more information about the Lyceum schedule, contact Left Bank Books at 338-9009.