From Fiddles to Family Secrets: Diana Hayes’ Irish Novella Shines

The innate need for family connection and shared cultural traditions is rooted in our biology. This sense of belonging is integral to our survival.

The concept of blood memory, where we feel a connection to ancestors and their experiences, is a driving force for Deirdre Ó hAodha, a teacher of traditional Irish music for disadvantaged inner-city children in Montreal.

She is preparing her star pupil, Éamon O’Connor, for a scholarship recital at Cork College University. Together they travel from Dublin to County Cork, visiting monastic ruin sites and monuments of ancient Celtic culture and share many stories and synchronicities along the way.

Deirdre is on a quest to uncover the story of her Irish Great-Grandfather Cornelius, who escaped Ireland in 1847 at the height of An Gorta Mór, The Great Hunger, and to find out if she has relatives still living in West Cork.

She has inherited Cornelius’s gift of second sight which she reveals through visions, intuition, and dreams. The theme of transformation through fire, faith, language, and music surfaces throughout their journey.

Through the mists and thin veil between worlds, Deirdre connects deeply to the land of her ancestors and regains a sense of family and belonging.

– Steeped in Celtic mythology and music, and accurate Irish history, particularly of The Great Hunger, spiced with glimpses of the supernatural, Looking for Cornelius, by Diana Hayes is a satisfying story, set mostly in Ireland, of a young woman’s search for her Irish great-grandfather while accompanying her thirteen-year-old fiddle student to compete for a music scholarship in Cork City. The writing is tight and often poetic, the research and descriptions of Irish locations are impeccable, and the plot twists are not foreseeable and so most pleasing. A must—and not only for lovers of Irish stories.

–Patrick Taylor, New York Times, USA Today, and Globe and Mail best-selling author of the Irish Country Doctor series

In Looking for Cornelius, Diana Hayes takes readers through an Irish landscape haunted by stone circles and ancient monastic ruins, lingering at lakes where saints performed miracles. We accompany Deirdre, a music teacher from Montreal, and her student Éamon, a gifted young fiddler, to Cork so that Éamon can audition for a place in a prestigious music program. Both of them are also searching for answers to the old riddles of family and belonging. Threaded through the narrative, phrases of poetry, of folk songs, in Gaeilge and English, serve as both gorgeous soundtrack and field-guide to this rich and lyrical novella. The novella is a special form, providing a meeting place for the intersection of characters and elliptical storytelling; Looking for Cornelius occupies this space beautifully and memorably.

–Theresa Kishkan, author of the novellas The Weight of the Hear, Winter Wren, Patrin