New! Interview with Author Eamon Loingsigh + Tour of Irish Gang Haunts in Brooklyn
Terence Donnellan, documentarian and TV host, just released a extraordinary interview/documentary with Eamon Loingsigh, author of the 2014 creative historical fiction release LIGHT OF THE DIDDICOY (Three Rooms Press, 978-0-9884008-9-4). The program features Loingsigh taking viewers on a tour of the Brooklyn Waterfront, home to the Irish gangs of LIGHT OF THE DIDDICOY in the early 20th century. Loingsigh takes us to 25 Bridge Street–headquarters of the White Hand gang; the old “Dock Loader’s Club,” Plymouth Street in DUMBO, and the Empire Stores under the bridges. We wind up at Spoonbill & Sugartown Booksellers in Williamsburg, where Eamon did a book signing. During extensive interviews, he discusses the book, the writing process and how his interest in Irish gangs came about through listening to his grandparents talk about Auld Irishtown in Brooklyn.
Great video, by an excellent interviewer showing a side of Brooklyn’s history that is still being uncovered.
Light of the Diddicoy is the brutal saga of Irish-American gangs on the Brooklyn waterfront in the early part of the twentieth century, told through the eyes of Irish immigrant Liam Garrity. Forced at age 14 to travel alone to America on the eve of the 1916 Easter Rising, Garrity stumbles directly into the hard-knock streets of the Brooklyn pier neighborhoods run by Bridge District gang The White Hand. In the industrialized enclaves where Famine Irish settled a generation earlier, Garrity has no choice but to use any means necessary to survive within the clan-like loyalties of the gang, and carve out his place in a no-holds-barred world of a community living outside the law.
Light of the Diddicoy: a novel by Eamon Loingsigh
ISBN: 978-0-9884008-9-4; 5.25″ x 8″, 232 pages, Trade Paper; Retail $15.95
Publication date: Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Share This!