Ireland Explained: Ireland: Beautiful, ethereal, tragic, strong, fun-loving. This charming journey reveals it all.

by Laura Harrison McBride

Ireland. An introduction to the matchless Irish experience of hospitality and good times, strength in adversity, spiritual intelligence when none might be expected, and a vibrant culture millions share, and millions more long for. Travel to Ireland in this book and come home with memories, or take it along and use it as a cultural compass to the Emerald Isle. Ireland Explained takes readers on a very personal trip around the Emerald Isle, with stops at interesting venues from Georgian homes to nouvelle cuisine restaurants--indeed, to one of the first ones in Ireland when it opened in the early 1980s. Visit castles, and tromp over open farmland. Look toward America from the west coast tracks; look toward Europe from cosmopolitan Dublin. You'll meet some people, too. Real characters. Real movers and shakers. And just about every other sort of person you can think of, from barkeeps to professors. Tuck this book in your suitcase and write your own annotations. Or read it in front of the fire at home, creating dreams or planning a trip of your own. However you do it, reading this book will provide you with a leisurely trip through one of the most beloved travel destinations on the planet, both exotic and familiar, homey and sublime. Beautiful, vexatious, vibrant, laugh-loving uplifting Ireland is what you'll find in the gentle prose of these pages, all of them written with love.

264 pages, Paperback

First published July 27, 2014

About the author

Possibly the weirdest thing about being an author is the research--especially when it turns up Eleanor of Aquitaine as one's 23rd great-grandmother. I'm also descended from a Tunisian who married a Spanish princess during the Crusades. And I can count among my ancestors a bunch of Brits who descended upon Providence, Rhode Island, in the early days of the colonies, and brought their incredibly fundamentalist Plymouth Brethren beliefs with them. Nonetheless, the grandfather who contributed that DNA to my mix was a first-class rascal, having been expelled from Albany Business College about 1901 for overturning an outhouse. He later went on to create a milk co-op in New York State that protected farmers' income for decades until corporate conglomerates dismantled it in court in the late 1980s. He was dead by then, thank goodness, or I expect he'd have had something to say about it.

I'm quite proud of my late quietly crusading accountant grandfather; I'm quite amazed by my genetic connection to European royalty. I'm proud of my First Place Virginia Press Association awards, but possibly more fond of my ribbons for riding my beloved horse, the late Major Yeats, over fences.

But I'm still just a kid born in Brooklyn, NY, to ordinary working parents. And that's the person who writes the snarky cozy mysteries featuring shelf Barker, a Brit with an Italian-American wife, and a large dose of attitude.

Aside from that, Granny Eleanor might be quite proud of some of my achievements, not least of which is having a "day job" for only about five years of my adult life, spending the rest freelancing. She might approve my love of horses and dogs and fine cuisine; not sure she'd approve of my liberal politics. But my rascally humanitarian grandfather clearly would...even though he was a lifelong Republican.

So here I am: a Brooklyn-born bundle of extreme contradictions. I love the Anglican Church for its beautiful music and liturgy, not to mention a number of lovely piles of rocks and stained-glass. But I follow a more shamanic path myself. I treasure America's energy, but I live in the EU where the pace is more measured. I love the idea of travel, but rarely set foot on an airplane. (OK, that has more to do with the misery of flight these days, and a soupcon of terror.) I'd love to be a vegetarian for spiritual reasons, but...do mussels come in vegetable form?

You can think Shelf Barker is my alter ego if you wish, or wait until the beginning of the new year and see if the heroine of the second series of mystery novels is more like me than the fictional man named Graham Barker (no middle name because of his Trotskyite parents), but called Shelf. Or maybe none of the above.

Let me know.

Thanks.