The Bromley Court Housing Project is a prison without bars where the poor struggle for survival. It is 1967 and the City of Boston is beginning to come apart at the seams. Racial hostility and a preoccupation with the war in Vietnam have brought about the beginnings of dramatic change throughout America. Despite the adversity of the times and their surroundings, a friendship holds fast in Bromley Court. Christopher Conley and Michael McLean are project kids, each attempting to cope with life and its unfairness. Christopher is in his senior year of high school. While on his way to school he sees Lorna, a stunningly beautiful black girl, waiting for the train. After months of observing her from across the expanse of a Boston subway station he summons the courage to speak to her and finally arranges a rendezvous after she gets out of work. Christopher tells Michael of his plans to take Lorna out and to accompany her home. Michael’s superior street sense and genuine concern for his best friend cause him to discourage Chris from attempting to take Lorna home, a home located in the heart of Boston’s seething black neighborhood. Chris’s desire for Lorna outweighs any concerns for personal safety. He is determined to overcome the racial hostility that surrounds them. He has fallen in love with her. Recognizing that Christopher is resolute, Michael insists that he at least take some protection on his venture into a part of the city enclosed by invisible walls of hate and fear. Michael supplies his unwilling friend with a .45 caliber pistol. That night, the lovers meet. A cobblestone street leads the way downward toward the dilapidated brownstone where Lorna lives. Suddenly, Lorna and Chris are attacked by three predators bent upon Christopher’s murder and Lorna’s rape. During the attack, Christopher retrieves the pistol from his school bag, lying near him in the gutter. With two blasts from the pistol he wounds one of the attackers, saving Lorna and dramatically altering the course of his life. After a tear-filled recitation of the circumstances of the shooting to his devastated mother, and a touching farewell with Michael, Christopher seeks a refuge with his movie actor brother, Jack Conley, amid “the experimental excesses of Hollywood, California." “Paths Along the Way” traces the lives of Christopher and Michael as they unfold against the backdrop of a turbulent yet captivating America. Christopher’s path will lead him back to Boston, where he will grow and prosper and ultimately become a prominent trial lawyer, while Michael is bent upon a darker course. He will enlist in the 101st Airborne and become the bravest of the brave as an Army Ranger enduring the horror of the Vietnam War. When he returns home, he becomes a state police detective, wrestling with his demons. Demons that force him to the brink of taking his own life and that of Christopher. On the night of November 2nd, 1991 a Boston Police Detective is brutally murdered during a botched drug raid. A corrupt, Boston Police Detective thereafter orchestrates the elaborate framing of a young black male by the name of Booker Webb as the murderer. Booker is a despised drug addict and the nephew of Lorna, Christopher’s long lost love. Lorna then reappears in Christopher’s life and implores him to undertake the defense of her flesh and blood. Michael is enlisted as Christopher’s investigator. His familiarity with the street leads him to believe in Booker’s case. He realizes that Christopher’s defense of Booker is his last chance to do something right. In a dramatic confrontation in an Irish neighborhood bar, he brings Christopher back from his wealth and privilege to the window of the hell that he and Booker have known. Christopher’s love for Michael and for Lorna cause him to undertake the defense of Booker Webb, while risking all that he has built and hoped for. All the while his only reassurance is to never underestimate the power of the truth.

Paths Along the Way

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Kenney, Paul

Thrillers & Suspense

Kinvara Productions

A True Man for Others: The Coach Jim Cotter Story, a new, illustrated memoir that celebrates the career and life of Boston College High School teacher and coach, Jim Cotter.Coach Cotter took the opportunity throughout his tenure at BC High to mentor many, many young athletes in life as well as in sport. Some of his players went on to careers in the NFL such as; Joe Nash, Bob Clasby, Paul Zaukauskas. Others went onto Ivy League educations at Harvard, Yale, Northeastern, and Tufts and then into successful business, or political careers. Among Cotter's former players are; a Suffolk County Probate Judge, a Massachusetts State Senator, plus many directors and CEOs of large healthcare and finance companies. Cotter's former players revere him as a life mentor. As Jack Hart, a former receiver for Cotter and now a Member of the Massachusetts State Senate, Chairman of Economic Development, states, "He taught us that life wasn't all about winning, but rather it was about how we carried ourselves with dignity as individuals and as a team. It was about how we reflected on BC High. It was about how we were growing not just as athletes, but as responsible, decent, compassionate young men. As historian Henry Adams wrote, 'A teacher affects eternity. He can never tell where his influence stops.' Jim Cotter had a positive impact on shaping our lives, and his lessons will echo in our children and for generations to come."

A True Man for Others: The Coach Jim Cotter Story

Cotter, Jim

Biographies & Memoirs

UNKNO

It is September, 1918 and the war to end all wars rages in France.  On his way back to the Western Front, a young American Army captain from the 69th New York Regiment is waiting anxiously on the platform of London's Waterloo Station.  It is there that he spies an old man reading from a crimson text.  As the train for Southampton arrives, the old man suddenly speaks.  "My travel takes me to the end of the line.  Your company is welcome within my carriage."   The young American accepts the old man's invitation and soon discovers that his traveling companion served with The Irish Brigade during the American Civil War. Through the recitations of this mysterious old man, we bear witness to times of sorrow and adventure.   In 1846, Ireland is in the death grip of the great famine, when young Thomas Francis Meagher returns to his native City of Waterford.  The son of a wealthy Catholic merchant, he has returned from the Continent to discover that his father has moved the family homestead away from the quay on the River Suir.  On a foggy night, while engaged in the pursuit of ladies of the evening, he discovers the reasons why.  Suddenly, he is confronted by the pleas of the desperate and the malnourished who are seeking to book passage on a coffin ship bound for America.  One of these, a young mother whose children are dying, leads him to the misery of a famine house.  It is there that he encounters Brother Edmund and accepts his challenge to help uplift the oppressed of his beloved Ireland.   Thereafter, at Dublin's Conciliation Hall, he rises in opposition to the Great Liberator, Daniel O'Connell, by calling for armed rebellion against British Rule.  This is the night when he receives the name that will carry him across the pages of history.  This is the night when he becomes Meagher of the Sword and the leader of the Young Ireland Rebellion. His courage and his quest for freedom will condemn him to life in exile within the prison colony of Tasmania.  It is there, where his faith and his courage are sorely tested. It is there, where he falls in love with the entrancing Catherine Bennet. It is there where he once again defies British Rule and escapes to the promise of freedom in America.   The famine Irish have flocked to New York City on a tide of desperation. When Meagher arrives, his notoriety and his charismatic appeal as a public speaker propel him to prominence. He is a staunch advocate for his people, first as the editor of The Irish News and then as a trial lawyer, thereby developing a massive loyal following. He speaks out courageously for a free Ireland and an America where all men will find liberty. When The American Civil War commences, he joins up with The Sixty Ninth New York Regiment. He is fearless in battle and a self-taught military tactician. These qualities cause President Lincoln to appoint him a brigadier general and the leader the Irish Brigade, a collection of rogues, poets and killers who fight like hellcats in the bloodiest of battles and win the lasting admiration of Ulysses S. Grant.   After the War, Meagher becomes the acting governor of the Montana Territory and a man of the West. It is there, where he seeks to build an "Eden of Liberty" amid the mountains and the clouds and to  prevent the bloodshed of the Indian Wars. It is there where he once again will continue his undying quest for freedom.

Man of the Sword

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Mary Kenney O'Sullivan was an unsung American heroine whose astounding life was a quest for female equality. Born in Hannibal Missouri in 1864, she was the youngest daughter of Irish immigrants. Following her father's demise, she became the caretaker of her widowed mother and moved to Chicago Illinois after the infamous Haymarket Massacre. This was at the height of the industrial revolution, when American workers were little more than slaves and females were the most oppressed and exploited of all workers. It was a time when workers' unions were demonized and the owners of industry were lionized, while engaged in untold acts of brutality, bloodshed, mayhem and murder. It was the "Gilded Age" when American history was written with the ink of lies. In Chicago, Mary would begin to organize working women and girls into trade unions and soon gained the attention of Samuel Gompers, The President of the American Federation of Labor. He would make her the first female labor organizer in America. She would soon become an admirer and ally of Mother Jones, Jane Addams, Eugene Debs and Clarence Darrow. She would meet her match in John O'Sullivan, a strikingly handsome man from Boston who had traveled the world as an able bodied seaman and become a labor columnist for the Boston Globe. She would marry John O'Sullivan and move to Boston where she would continue to engage in the organization of women workers, helping to form the Women's Trade Union League. After her husband's untimely passing, she became the sole support of her three children and suffered through the worst of times only to be resurrected by her faith. Thereafter, she would help to organize the historic textile workers strike in the mill town of Fall River, Massachusetts and the infamous "Bread and Roses Strike" in the City of Lawrence. During the Great Depression she would become an energetic supporter of Boston's Mayor, James Michael Curley. After Franklin D. Roosevelt's election as President of the United States, Mrs. Roosevelt sought her advice and counsel in helping formulate and enact legislation that fostered the equality of women, the elimination of child labor and the protection of the lives and safety of men and women in the workplace. Mary Kenney O'Sullivan, the Angel from the Dust, was simply the best, because she was the first, a pioneer. Never has her story and the story of America during her lifetime been more timely.

Angel from the Dust

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