SINGLE TRACK

Love, laughter and a workingman's salary suffice to keep Bill Connelly, his wife, Kate, and their seven children afloat for thirty years in this novel set in the second half of 20thCentury America. Under the sheltering eaves of the proud, demanding old house that is the manifestation of Bill's American Dream, the family comes of age. Meanwhile the world outside and around them radiates with political and social upheaval.
Bill Connelly is an optimistic, self-professed lucky immigrant from Belfast. Kate longs for the life she dreamed of as a child growing up near Central Park, a life full of travel and adventure. Her dreams are thwarted by her adult reality-housework and motherhood. Clare, their eldest daughter, grows up with mixed messages ("family is everything" … "marriage is a trap"). She struggles to locate her place in the world, and in the process finds herself single and pregnant-a most unlikely, uncharacteristic happenstance. Set within the backdrop of a rambling old house in need of repair, these are the main protagonists of SINGLE TRACK.
The novel spans the decades of the twentieth century, recounting the New York Irish-American experience. Bill is proud of the good fortune that landed him his job with the railroad. He believes in blue-collar work, in the power of unions, and that humor, love and living the right way will get you by-all be it on a wing-and-a-prayer. In the nineteen seventies, Clare follows him into the world of railroading, where as one of the first females to work the trains where she is woefully unprepared for the crude, sexist culture of labor unions. After her mother's unexpected death, Clare leaves her job and sets off on a road trip, where her relationship with a man she falls in love with teaches her that life should not be lived to avoid issues but must be experienced fully. Because one way or another a full life will find you. But will it be the life of Clare's choosing?
Single Track evokes the struggles and passions of an Irish-American family, the shattering loss that threatens to break its spirit, and one daughter's journey in search of answers.