We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It by Tom Phelan c2020 A Memoir of My Irish Boyhood

Description

Tom Phelan’s memoir, We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It, vividly recounts his 1940s childhood in County Laois, Ireland. He portrays a life defined by grueling farm labor, deep-seated faith, and a resilient community. Despite the absence of modern luxuries and the presence of material poverty, Phelan illustrates a childhood “rich” in family bonds and ancestral connection. It is a poignant, humorous, and unsentimental tribute to a vanished way of Irish life.