About

It is 1947 in Ireland when nineteen-year-old Siobhan Molony stops believing in God. Hidden behind the free-growing peat bogs of Kilconnell, she is confined within the religious teachings of the Catholic church. Losing her doting daddy to the tuberculous that plagued the country during the harsh winter of The Big Snow, she is left to run the family farm with her abusive mother. A young woman whose voice is lost to the wind, the winter rages with cut clothes from her mother’s scissor happy hands and bible teachings. It is only when Michael O’Raffety, a charming lad with elbow-nudging humour, brings cattle to their derelict farm and invites Siobhan to a crossroads dance. She feels finally free, spinning in drunken excitement, away from the Holy Mary’s and Our Father’s. But that night led to a pregnancy of an innocent baby that was conceived in religious sin. And under her mother’s rule and Father Dolan’s altar stand, she is sent to Tuam’s Mother and Baby Home.

It is 1982 when twenty-year-old Brendan O’Rafferty is kicked out for being gay. Mindsets are changing in the cities, but the rural land of Kiconnell stays stagnant for Brendan. His father Michael, changed with the cynical passing of time, butts heads with his sons out of the box mindset. Married to best friend, Aoife, Brendan feels stuck in a state of comfortable uncomfortableness. It is only when the good-looking Oisin with his musical dreams and his need to live begins working on their farm does Brendan finally feel free. They start a relationship, kissing behind barns and secret touches under the table. But Aoife, destroyed by her husband’s cheating, exposes Brendan’s and Oisin’s relationship to his family so she can get an annulment. Michael, with his fear of the village, throws Brendan out of the family home to go live in the city of Dublin.

Through weaving roots from their family tree, their caged stories of oppression connect. Brendan, after finding Michael’s letters to Siobhan when she was forced into the Mother and Baby Home, needs to tell the story of those whose leaves fall from the tree to rot.

When the Leaves Fall is a fiction novel that is currently underway, and still yet to be completed. Keep an eye on this website for more updates about the novel’s progression.