Goodreads asked Eileen O'Finlan:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Eileen O'Finlan The inspiration for Kelegeen came a long time ago when I was working on my undergraduate degree in history. I was studying Irish history and my professor suggested that as a creative exercise I keep a diary as if I were a parish priest at the time of the Great Hunger (aka the Irish Potato Famine). I really enjoyed that excercise and realized it could easily be the bones of a novel. As I reworked it into a novel, it naturally grew and changed, but the foundation for it came from that exercise. That's why wrote in the book's dedication, "Special dedication in memory of my undergraduate professor of Irish history, the late Alwyn Fraser, without whom the idea for this novel would never have been conceived." I so wish he could have lived to see what he inspired.

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