Full name: Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show: A Novel

Author: Frank Delaney Year: 2010 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Historical fiction, Fiction Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9781400067831 9780812979732 1400067839

January 1932: While Ireland roils in the run-up to the most important national election in the Republic's short history, Ben MacCarthy and his father watch a vagabond variety revue making a stop in the Irish countryside. After a two-hour kaleidoscope of low comedy, Shakespearean recitations, juggling, tumbling, and other entertainments, Ben's father, mesmerized by Venetia Kelly, the troupe's magnetic headliner, makes a fateful decision: to abandon his family and set off on the road with Miss Kelly and her caravan. Ben's mother, shattered by the desertion, exhorts, "Find him and bring him back," thereby sending the boy on a Homeric voyage into manhood, a quest that traverses the churning currents of Ireland's fractious society and splinters the MacCarthy family. Similar books: The Matchmaker of Kenmare by Frank Delaney Shannon by Frank Delaney The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan Tipperary by Frank Delaney The End of the Hunt by Thomas Flanagan The Yellow House by Patricia Falvey An Irish Country Girl by Patrick Taylor Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor by Patrick Taylor The Tenants of Time by Thomas Flanagan Songs of Love and War by Santa Montefiore Ireland by Frank Delaney The Last Prince of Ireland by Morgan Llywelyn The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens The Heritage by Frances Parkinson Keyes Trinity by Leon Uris Seek the Fair Land by Walter Macken The Help by Kathryn Stockett A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah