Bookshelf:
Darkest hours of drug addiction
 Julie
O’Toole’s life is picture-perfect. At 32, she is pretty, fit
and happily married. She has a job she loves, a large circle of friends
and a supportive family.
It is hard to believe that only a few years ago she was a hopeless heroin
addict, teetering on the edge of life and death. Julie dropped out of
school at 15 and started using heroin at 16. By the time she was 18, she
was a chronic addict. She spent months living rough on the streets, dealing
drugs and stealing to feed her habit.
Following two spells in prison and a near-fatal overdose her life was
saved when a drugs counsellor brought her to America. There she slowly
began to rebuild her life.
With honesty and insight Julie tells of the horror and degradation that
come with life as a drug addict and reveals the extraordinary strength
of will that enabled her to conquer heroin.
Britain has the highest number of drug-related deaths in Europe: Out of
7,266 deaths from overdoses of illegal drugs across the EU in 1999, 2,857
— 39 per cent — were in Britain. Figures show that people
who inject heroin are about 14 times more likely to die than their peers.
Julie says that she hopes her book will encourage people to change.
She says: “If my story gives just one person enough strength to
walk away from drugs and to take their life back then it will have been
worth it.
“The next time you see a heroin addict remember how easily it can
happen, and how often, it isn’t their choice. They are somebody’s
daughter, sister or mother.”
Julie O’Toole now counsels drug addicts on behalf of the Victory
Outreach Programme. She is happily married to Gerard.
Heroin by Julie O’Toole is available in bookshops from March 3
or online at www.maverickhouse.com
Walter Keady:
The Dowry
In 1946 rural Ireland, Brideen Conway lusts after Kieran McDermot but
the couple cannot afford to marry. Meanwhile, wealthy publican Austin
Glynn is offering a substantial dowry for any suitable mate for his lonely
daughter, Aideen.
The competition is fierce, with Father Donovan plotting to acquire the
dowry to enable Brideen and other young parishioners to marry and have
children. Martin McDermot, the local rake,
schemes to get his hands on the money without having to marry Aideen and
then there is Alphonsus Fenerty, author of romantic novels, who is desperately
seeking a wife.
Plots and counterplots make for a swift-paced comedy of rural manners.
Walter Keady was in the Irish Civil
Service, served as a Catholic missionary priest in Brazil and later
worked at IBM. He lives with his wife in New York’s Hudson Valley.
Walter Ellis:
The Beginning Of The End — The Crippling Disadvantages Of
A Happy Irish Childhood
Sarah Walter Ellis grew up in east Belfast. His father was a commercial
traveller, his mother a housewife. He and his sister were not abused as
children. Ellis was never forced to wear girls’ clothes or spend
days naked in a cold cellar. Instead, he was sent to school each day and
to church on Sunday in the summer. He and his family went on holiday to
the seaside.
But, determined that he should not suffer from the crippling disadvantage
of a happy Irish childhood, he systematically set about destroying everthing
that gave him stability. He was expelled from school and dropped out of
not one, but two universities.
He also acquired as his best friend the Protestant renegade Ronnie Bunting,
who, as chief of staff of the INLA, murdered Airey Neave, the Shadow Secretary
of State for Northern Ireland,in the car park of the House of Commons.
Bunting was an extraordinary, demonic personality. He once foisted Joe
McCann, Ireland’s most wanted man, on Ellis’s mum for the
weekend and gave Walter a suitcase to look after that turned out to contain
over £100,000 — the proceeds of an armed robbery. The last
straw came when Ellis was arrested by Special Branch in England on suspicion
of plotting to assassinate top government Minister William Whitelaw.
The Beginning of the End is like nothing else that has come out of the
Ulster Troubles and is sure to shock, intrigue and entertain.
Walter lives in New York, where he contributes to a variety of US, British
and Irish publications. He writes a Saturday column from America for the
Belfast Telegraph and is presently at work on a novel based around the
life and times of Raoul Wallenberg, the wartime Swedish diplomat who saved
the lives of more than 100,000 Hungarian Jews.
Rebecca O’Connor:
Scealta — Short Stories by Irish Women
The short story is one of Ireland’s national treasures, and in Scealta
there are some of its finest practitioners, from such established names
as Julia O’Faolain, Claire Keegan and Christine Dwyer Hickey to
the exciting new voices of Judy Kravis, Eithne McGuinness and Cherry Smyth.
Featured in the book are stories of dysfunctional marriages, abnormal
goings-on in rural outposts, urban alienation and kitchen-sink dramas.
Domestic violence, child abuse, and abortion are laid startlingly bare.
The voices are bold, unsentimental, often very funny, and always deeply
affecting.
Part of a series showcasing contemporary women writers from around the
world.
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