Brian Collins

The Rath Brian Collins

What if we suffer things from before we were born? A man writes to console his heartsick daughter with a wild tale about sadness like that. "It's half of what ails us," he tells her, "someone else's grief." It all began with young Tom Hedderman and his wanting a little love. Love needed land in old Moyloo, a bit of dirt for spuds, and there was none but rathground, where the ghosts of the Old People never let up. What follows is a fantastical test of spirit. The ghosts keep knocking Tom's cabin down, Peg, his wife, blows up like a cow, and the children are all faerie cursed-the eldest heartstopping reckless, the girls too beautiful and weird. Then comes the day with clouds like coffins and the spuds all turn black, the Great Hunger. The few who survive shoulder a sadness that would last a hundred years. "Come down to us through the blood like crooked teeth," the man tells his daughter. Not quite cure for what she is feeling, but a chance at one-knowing what she is grieving so she can lay it down. That and her father's story about how love sees people through.