The Immortal Irishman

Book excerpt: In the New York Times bestseller The Immortal Irishman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Timothy Egan illuminates the dawn of the great Irish American story, with all its twists and triumphs, through the life of one heroic man. A dashing young orator during the Great Hunger of the 1840s, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony for life. But two years later he was “back from the dead” and in New York, instantly the most famous Irishman in America. Meagher’s rebirth included his leading the newly formed Irish Brigade in many of the fiercest battles of the Civil War. Afterward, he tried to build a new Ireland in the wild west of Montana — a quixotic adventure that ended in the great mystery of his disappearance, which Egan resolves convincingly at last. “This is marvelous stuff. Thomas F. Meagher strides onto Egan's beautifully wrought pages just as he lived — powerfully larger than life. A fascinating account of an extraordinary life.”—Daniel James Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Facing the Mountain