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James Heneghan
James Heneghan has a way with the gripping first sentence. Torn Away, first published in 1994 and recently re-issued (Orca $8.95), opens with, "They handcuffed him to the seat so he could cause no trouble on the airplane.";
Declan, thirteen years old, Irish, Catholic and fueled with rage after the deaths of his mother and sister by a Belfast car bomb, is being shipped to Canada to live with west coast relatives.
Once there, neither Uncle Matthew's safe haven at Otter Harbour nor young Ana's beguiling smile and green eyes deters Declan from his vow of a return to Ireland - and revenge.
Hit Squad (Orca $9.95), initial title in Orca Soundings, a teen fiction series for reluctant readers, starts, "Friday afternoon, ninth-grade art class, final period. Two girls spat sunflower seeds at the blue-eyed blond."; Later they lure Birgit Neilsen to a deserted stockroom, stuff her mouth with paper towels, hold her down and drool "saliva-melted"; Mars bar onto her face. It's something the girls come to regret when Birgit heads up the "Clean-up Committee"; and gets back at the "animals"; who assaulted her in the stockroom. Reluctant recruit Mickey, new to the school, recently bullied himself but more than a little infatuated with leggy, knockout Birgit, suffers his own regrets when his decision to draw a friend into the hit squad for added muscle invites tragic consequences.
Waiting for Sarah (Orca $9.95), written with long-time collaborator Bruce McBay, begins, "In the minute before the crash, the father was squinting into the harsh yellow glare of the late afternoon sun."; Then a drunk driver slams into the family Chevy, taking Mike's parents, sister, and his legs. Once out of rehab and forced back to grade twelve, Mike, bitter and lonely, agrees to put together a history of the school as a way of avoiding classes and gawking fellow students. But barricaded in the library's dusty archives, wheelchair-bound Mike is pestered by an annoyingly persistent grade-eight kid. But Sarah is not what she seems and it's only by solving the mystery of her desperate secret that Mike finds peace himself.
Heneghan, three-time recipient of the Sheila A. Egoff Prize and Governor General's Award nominee, was born in Liverpool, which he calls the "capital of Ireland,"; in 1930. He came to Canada in 1957, worked for over a decade with the Vancouver police as a fingerprint specialist, went on to teach high school English in Burnaby and has written for young people for the past twenty years.
A central theme in many of his books is abandonment. Declan and Mike are orphans. Mickey is a foster kid. Wish Me Luck follows Jamie Monaghan, exiled to Canada to escape WWII air raids over Liverpool. Thirteen-year-old Tom Mullen, the main character in The Grave, Heneghan's most acclaimed novel, is dumped in a shopping mall as a baby and shuffled from one foster home to another. Flood, the title that netted the Egoff hat trick, takes Andy Flynn's mother and stepfather in a flash flood and sends stern Aunt Mona in her grey overcoat and the "smell of fog and mothballs"; to spirit Andy across the country. In Promises to Come, which deals with the experiences of Boat People through the eyes of Vietnamese children, the heroine, sixteen-year-old "Kim"; has flashbacks to a Saigon orphanage and reveals to a psychiatrist beatings, gang rape and the deaths of her friends and family.
Heneghan confronts increasingly serious situations for his young readers, from the devastating Irish potato famine to civil unrest and war with unflinching realism. Yet his writing, catching both the cynicism and resilience of adolescence, along with trademark drama from the opening sentence onward, keeps his stories accessible and compelling. Torn Away 1-55143-263-3; Hit Squad 1-55143-269-2; Waiting for Sarah 1-55143-270-6
[Louise Donnelly/ BCBW Winter 2003]
Declan, thirteen years old, Irish, Catholic and fueled with rage after the deaths of his mother and sister by a Belfast car bomb, is being shipped to Canada to live with west coast relatives.
Once there, neither Uncle Matthew's safe haven at Otter Harbour nor young Ana's beguiling smile and green eyes deters Declan from his vow of a return to Ireland - and revenge.
Hit Squad (Orca $9.95), initial title in Orca Soundings, a teen fiction series for reluctant readers, starts, "Friday afternoon, ninth-grade art class, final period. Two girls spat sunflower seeds at the blue-eyed blond."; Later they lure Birgit Neilsen to a deserted stockroom, stuff her mouth with paper towels, hold her down and drool "saliva-melted"; Mars bar onto her face. It's something the girls come to regret when Birgit heads up the "Clean-up Committee"; and gets back at the "animals"; who assaulted her in the stockroom. Reluctant recruit Mickey, new to the school, recently bullied himself but more than a little infatuated with leggy, knockout Birgit, suffers his own regrets when his decision to draw a friend into the hit squad for added muscle invites tragic consequences.
Waiting for Sarah (Orca $9.95), written with long-time collaborator Bruce McBay, begins, "In the minute before the crash, the father was squinting into the harsh yellow glare of the late afternoon sun."; Then a drunk driver slams into the family Chevy, taking Mike's parents, sister, and his legs. Once out of rehab and forced back to grade twelve, Mike, bitter and lonely, agrees to put together a history of the school as a way of avoiding classes and gawking fellow students. But barricaded in the library's dusty archives, wheelchair-bound Mike is pestered by an annoyingly persistent grade-eight kid. But Sarah is not what she seems and it's only by solving the mystery of her desperate secret that Mike finds peace himself.
Heneghan, three-time recipient of the Sheila A. Egoff Prize and Governor General's Award nominee, was born in Liverpool, which he calls the "capital of Ireland,"; in 1930. He came to Canada in 1957, worked for over a decade with the Vancouver police as a fingerprint specialist, went on to teach high school English in Burnaby and has written for young people for the past twenty years.
A central theme in many of his books is abandonment. Declan and Mike are orphans. Mickey is a foster kid. Wish Me Luck follows Jamie Monaghan, exiled to Canada to escape WWII air raids over Liverpool. Thirteen-year-old Tom Mullen, the main character in The Grave, Heneghan's most acclaimed novel, is dumped in a shopping mall as a baby and shuffled from one foster home to another. Flood, the title that netted the Egoff hat trick, takes Andy Flynn's mother and stepfather in a flash flood and sends stern Aunt Mona in her grey overcoat and the "smell of fog and mothballs"; to spirit Andy across the country. In Promises to Come, which deals with the experiences of Boat People through the eyes of Vietnamese children, the heroine, sixteen-year-old "Kim"; has flashbacks to a Saigon orphanage and reveals to a psychiatrist beatings, gang rape and the deaths of her friends and family.
Heneghan confronts increasingly serious situations for his young readers, from the devastating Irish potato famine to civil unrest and war with unflinching realism. Yet his writing, catching both the cynicism and resilience of adolescence, along with trademark drama from the opening sentence onward, keeps his stories accessible and compelling. Torn Away 1-55143-263-3; Hit Squad 1-55143-269-2; Waiting for Sarah 1-55143-270-6
[Louise Donnelly/ BCBW Winter 2003]
Submitted on November 20, 2003 in By David.
