The Tattered Cover

The paperback edition of my last novel, The O'Briens, comes out in the US this week. This Tuesday, March 12, at 7:30pm I'll be talking, reading and signing books at The Tattered Cover, on Colfax Ave. in Denver. Details here. And I'll be reading and talking at Left Bank Books in Belfast, Maine on Sunday March 17th, St Patrick's Day at 3pm. And I apologize for the hideous typography & layout of this post, but I can't persuade Blogger to set everything in the same typeface.

“The best family sagas follow the slow-motion explosion of genes into successive

generations but also set their stories against historical change, revealing its power toerode even the strongest characters. . . . World War II hovers in this novel’s path like flakand rips the lives of the novel’s characters to shreds…The O’Briens is a major accomplishment.” —New York Times Book Review 
“Illuminating . . . . an epic along the lines of Middlesex in the way it follows a family through time and examines the results of their actions . . . . A brooding novel, engrossing in its scope and detail, The O’Briens keeps sight of the family’s personal stories amid the larger history of much of the twentieth century.” —Booklist
"Time and time again, Behrens proves himself a first-rate seanchaí, the Irish term for astoryteller, by bringing the O’Brien clan to life on the page. En route, he fashions atopographically capacious narrative that relishes the scents of Santa Barbara, the pastoralbeauty of the Ojai Valley and the tidal mantras of coastal Maine." —James McElroy,The Washington Post