Timothy Egan – Reading from The Immortal Irishman
About Timothy Egan
Timothy Egan, a former Grand Marshall of the Seattle St. Patrick’s Day Parade, comes from a family of nine, from a mother who loved books and a father with the Irish gift of finding joy in small things. He worked on a farm, in a factory, and at a fast-food outlet while muddling through nearly seven on-and-off years of college.
He is the author of nine books. His most recent, A PILGRIMAGE TO ETERNITY, has just been published. This is a very personal book, an adventure on an ancient pilgrimage trail through the heart of Europe, the Via Francigena. It’s a journey, a family story, and a history of Christianity.
THE IMMORTAL IRISHMAN was a New York Times bestseller. His book on Edward Curtis, SHORT NIGHTS OF THE SHADOW CATCHER, was awarded the Carnegie Award for best nonfiction. His account of the Dust Bowl, THE WORST HARD TIME, won the 2006 National Book Award, considered one of the nation’s highest literary honors, and he was featured prominently in the 2012 Ken Burns film on the Dust Bowl.
A lifelong journalist, Mr. Egan now writes an online opinion column for The New York Times. Prior to that, Mr. Egan worked as a national correspondent for the Times, roaming the West. As a Times correspondent, he shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 with a team of reporters for its series, “How Race is Lived in America.”
A graduate of the University of Washington, Mr. Egan also holds honorary doctorates from Whitman College, Willamette University, Lewis and Clark College, and Western Washington University. A third-generation Westerner and father of two, Mr. Egan lives in Seattle, a city that loves writers, and honored him once by naming May 12 a day in his honor – alas, no exemption from parking tickets.
THE IMMORTAL IRISHMAN
“…A GRIPPING, NOVELISTIC PAGE-TURNER.”
-The Wall Street Journal
A New York Times Bestseller! Winner of the 2017 Montana Book Award. The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. He escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York — the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America.
Meagher’s rebirth in America included his leading the newly formed Irish Brigade from New York in many of the fiercest battles of the Civil War — Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg. Twice shot from his horse while leading charges, left for dead in the Virginia mud, Meagher’s dream was that Irish-American troops, seasoned by war, would return to Ireland and liberate their homeland from British rule.
The hero’s last chapter, as territorial governor of Montana, was a romantic quest for a true home in the far frontier. His death has long been a mystery to which Egan brings haunting, colorful new evidence.