The Banyan Tree: A Novel

An extraordinary, inspirational novel about a mother and her family in rural Ireland. Covering the eighty-plus years of the life of Minnie O’Brien, who is bound to take her place in Irish literature alongside James Joyce’s Molly Bloom, The Banyan Tree is a rich saga of rural Ireland in the twentieth century. In distinctly layered prose that has been compared to that of Joyce, Yeats, and Dylan Thomas, Nolan lovingly details the life and times, the triumphs and tragedies of this spirited woman, who struggles to keep her body and soul, as well as her hopes, alive. Married in 1922 to Peter O’Brien, a good and decent man who nonetheless harbors a terrible secret, Minnie bears him three children: Brendan, who joins the Church, rises to become a bishop, and is quietly drinking himself to death in New York; Sheila, who marries above herself to a wealthy but nasty Dublin businessman; and Francis, the youngest, who leaves home at age seventeen to wander the world in search of fame and fortune. It is for Francis—Minnie’s favorite—that she jealously struggles to keep the five fields willed her by her husband from the clutches of her ambitious and unscrupulous neighbor, Jude Fortune. For, she is sure, one day soon Frankie will put an end to his wanderlust and come home to claim what is rightfully his. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.