This powerful historical fiction is one of our best reads in 2025. The man is real; the story highlights the important points in his life with the author taking some creative liberty to fictionalize some of the minor and unimportant points. This is a gripping novel based on the 26 letters Patrick O’Donnell wrote to Victor Hugo during his last days in the Newgate Prison in London between December 5th and December 17th.
O’Donnell was in prison for the murder of James Carey, one of the killers involved in the Phoenix Park murders. The letters were uncovered in 2016 and were in poor condition. They are translated by the author while his commentary on each letter is printed between chapters/letters.
This is the story of survival against all odds, even with a totally unexpected twist outlined in O’Donnell’s 26th and final letter.
O’Donnell covers his life in these letters, from surviving the potato famine in Ireland, to crossing the Atlantic Ocean in poor conditions in 1847 ending in a wreck on the rocks, to the typhoid sheds of Quebec to meeting Hanora, the love of his life, to living in New York in the 1850s, to serving in the Confederate army during the Civil War.
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I came across this book by accident and read it on holiday. Why is it not a Sunday Times Best Seller? It is outstanding in every way. Every chapter is a facilitating story and the book as a whole is impossible to put down. Brilliant writing, superlative story telling, made me cry and laugh. Please let there be follow up.