Local author tells story of Irish famine

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

A local Catholic’s first book was just published – in time for St. Patrick’s Day. 
The novel looks at life in Ireland and the faith that sustained the people during the 19th-century potato famine. 
Author Eileen Charbonneau says the idea for the book “started a good 20 years ago.” 
“Kelegeen” is about the famine which drove tens of thousands, including her Irish ancestors, to immigrate to the United States.     
Her grandmother was a Finlan, and Ms. Charbonneau  writes under the pen name Eileen O’Finlan. 
“I was very happy to make a priest one of the heroes … with everything they’ve gone through, with the scandals,” says Ms. Charbonneau, administrative assistant in the diocesan Judicial Vicar’s Office. “I wanted his character to be human, but deeply good. I want people to start seeing them that way again.”
The character, Father Brian O’Malley, probably has in him a bit of each of the priests who’ve most influenced her, she says. She thinks she had Father Henry A. Donoghue, her former pastor at St. George Parish in Worcester, most in mind when she started writing, because of his gentle ways.
“Once I get started writing, it feels like I’m taking dictation,” Ms. Charbonneau says, adding that sometimes her characters surprise her by what they say.
Does she think it’s God guiding her?
“I could be,” she responds. “I always pray before I write, that the Holy Spirit will inspire me and that whatever I write will glorify God and be in accordance with God’s will.”
Asked if Lent is a good publication time, she says it is, noting that there are people starving today.
“When you read it, you realize what starvation is like,” she says. “Does it make you want to do something?”
She says she likes having strong female characters, including one who’s part of the communion of saints, who helps lift readers up from the famine’s heaviness.
The spirituality in the book reflects the Irish of that time period and her own approach, she says.
“I feel very close to God in nature,” she says, and she is concerned about the environment. “I love the liturgical year, because I feel very connected to the liturgical seasons, that are cyclical. That’s Celtic spirituality.”
Speaking of the Irish she says, “They also have a connection to ‘the other side,’” sometimes called the “thin places,” somewhere between heaven and earth. That’s where one character’s premonitions come from; “it’s almost like prophecy.” 
Moral issues raised in the book include sexual ones (addressed openly but delicately), selfishness and self-sacrifice, and stealing to survive. 
“The famine itself is the villain – and the landlords that don’t care,” Ms. Charbonneau says. A key character acts like a villain too, but understanding his past sheds additional light on him. 
Characters go to confession and turn their lives around.
“The famine was a horrendous thing, but you also see God’s grace working through it,” she says.
Ms. Charbonneau says she always wanted to be an author, but never took writing courses. An assignment for an Irish history course sparked the idea for this novel. 
“I was working on my undergraduate degree in history,” in the 1990s at Atlantic Union College in Lancaster, she explains. Her professor at that Seventh-day Adventist institution – Awlyn Fraser – suggested she write a diary as if she was a Catholic priest during the potato famine.
Later she joined the Worcester Writers Workshop, where she got help to turn the diary into a novel.
Rejections from publishers – and another novel about the potato famine –  led her to stop pursuing publication. The other novel, “Rachel LeMoyne,” by another Eileen Charbonneau, made her lament, “It’s already been done.”     So she turned to other things, like getting her master’s degree in pastoral ministry from Anna Maria College. 
But several years ago she emailed the other author about the novel problem of having the same name and the same subject. 
“She thought that was a hoot and a half,” Ms. Charbonneau says. “She was happy about it.” She also offered her services as a professional editor.
“I literally rewrote the book from beginning to end,” keeping the same basic story, then sent it back to her, Ms. Charbonneau recalls. A couple months ago her namesake contacted Judith Pittman, her own publisher at BWL Publishing Inc.
“It was a couple of days later I heard from Jude: ‘We want to publish it’” – in time for St. Patrick’s Day, Ms. Charbonneau says.
A member of St. Mary Parish in Jefferson, she writes in her acknowledgements that it is “the Place to Be!” Among people she names are diocesan leaders, including several priests, with Judicial Vicar Msgr. F. Stephen Pedone being dubbed “best boss EVER!” She also acknowledges her family, and former colleagues at Old Sturbridge Village who taught her about historical research.
The book is available for digital download and is in print.
The reason she used the pen name Eileen O’Finlan was to avoid confusion with the other Eileen Charbonneau.
They’re friends now, maybe relatives from way back, and are discussing joint book signings here and in Vermont, where the other author lives.
Meanwhile, Ms. Charbonneau’s working on another book, and planning a sequel to “Kelegeen.”