In "Klondike House," John Dwyer recounts his memories of growing up on the remote but beautiful Beara Peninsula in West Cork, Ireland. This was Ireland of the 1970s and 80s before the arrival of the short-lived economic riches of the Celtic Tiger.
Dwyer's vivid and colorful prose describes his hard but happy life as part of a isolated but close-knit community:
Early school days spent in a building with no running water or electricity An encounter with a violent sheep that literally turned his world upside down The days spent cutting the turf and saving the hay by hand An Irish Christmas where nearly everything on the table was sourced from the farm His exciting family history that brought his relations to the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada
Complemented by a collection of evocative photographs, each story tells of a way of life that has now largely disappeared.
Sprinkled with a selection of fitting works by some of Ireland's best-known poets such as Seamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh, this gem of a book is a chronicle of the simple but happy life of an Irish farmer boy.