Tales from the Irish diaspora

The Boy and The Crow by Brendan Walsh

It is a small world. No, I am not singing it, I’m just saying that it is a small world, after all.

My sister was best friends with a girl in secondary school who had an aunt that immigrated to England, had a son, and the family then immigrated to Canada.

I get an email from a man who has self-published a book and he tells me his cousins live not too far away from where I grew up in Ireland. Brendan Walsh, author of The Boy and the Crow contacted me about my writing, and his writing, and he mentioned how difficult it is as a self-published author to promote and publicize your work.

Brendan had this brilliant idea to generate more reviews of our self-published books on Amazon and Goodreads: we send each other copies of our books, read them, and review them.

I didn’t know at the time that he was the first cousin of my sister’s best friend in secondary school…..so, it’s a small world after all.

Without further ado, here is my review of Brendan Walsh’s lovely book The Boy and The Crow.

Daniel Cagney knows a thing or two about crows. He knows that there are two kinds; the gang members he hung out with in New York city who called themselves “The Crows,” and the Corvus brachyrhynchos kind, the American crow.

When Daniel is sent on a year’s probation to live with his grandparents on their farm in Vermont his knowledge of both types of “crows” changes. He learns to disassociate himself from his former gang with the help of his dog Jessie and a crow named Paddy. Humans help him along the way also, but Daniel’s appreciation for freedom comes mostly from Paddy.

When Daniel wounds Paddy by accident and then nurses the crow back to health, a bond is created between boy and crow. Although Danny saved Paddy’s life, at the end of the story we learn that Paddy returns the favor.

Gang life, teen angst, the need to belong, struggling to be accepted, and gang mentality are nothing when it comes to simple family values and the love of family and friends.

Walsh has a keen eye and ear for the sights and sounds of nature. He constructs a vivid word picture which transports the reader to the green hills of Vermont. I heard every “caw caw” as clearly as if Paddy was on my own shoulder. I shivered with Danny and his mother as they feared for their lives in a pit rapidly filling with water, I saw the landscape and felt the emotions of each character.

The lesson learned from The Boy and The Crow by Brendan Walsh is that sometimes animals and birds know more about us than we think. Read Brendan Walsh’s The Boy and The Crow, you’ll never look at a crow the same way again.