Seamus O'Rouke's obsession with a girl he discovers on You Tube turns into love when Fiona MacKenzie turns up on his Midwestern campus. While the sixty-five-year-old Irishman's pursuit of this twenty-year-old folk singer is against all reason, rhyme does play its role. Seamus is adept at wielding poetry, as well as music, art, gourmet meals and fine wine, in his campaign for the heart of his green-eyed auburn-haired beauty.
Fiona is haunted by the earlier death of her Scottish father and by the resulting loneliness, which she tries to hide beneath her usually self-confident exterior. She tries to keep from being overwhelmed by Seamus' larger-than-life personality. Gradually, however, her skeptical common sense gives way before the onslaught of this unreconstructed Irish Romantic.
During their brief months together, this age-crossed pair discovers that romance is a tightrope strung between incomprehension and farce. As told through a his/her dual narrative, these two head-strong and highly articulate individuals continuously collide, often comically, as they struggle to comprehend the nature of their love. In spite of moments of often bawdy comedy, questions of love, age, loss and death thread their way through the story. As Fiona observes, "What strange ways love has of going about her business."
The novel is structured around the voices of the two principal characters. Facing a serious operation, Seamus writes down an account of his relationship with Fiona. She later finds the manuscript, and as she reads through it, her reactions, thoughts and comments complete the book's dual narrative.
References to art, poetry and music weave their way throughout the novel. In fact, the title of the novel comes from the last line of Robert Burns' incomparable love song, "My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose." This song forms the initial link between Fiona and Seamus, and it is Fiona's memory of it that closes the story. Other poems and songs that figure promently in the story are "Southwinds," Yeats' "The Song of the Wandering Aengus," Kavanagh's "On Raglan Road," as well as pieces by Shakespeare, Donne, and Heaney.
William H. A. Williams, the author of Tho' It Were Ten Thousand Miles, is a Cincinnati-based historian, writer and musician. This is his first work of fiction. The Irish elements in the novel—the male protagonist's vocabulary and speech patterns, bits of folklore and songs, references to Dublin and the West of Ireland—are based on the author's knowledge of and experiences in Ireland.
A Love Story that will make you laugh, bring a tear, and spark wonder at the way song, poetry and Irish Romanticism can bridge the generational divide
