I’ve always found reading about Ireland compelling, having family lineage that includes a paternal great great grandmother who immigrated from County Cork to Galveston in the nineteenth century. Mary Beth Keane’s Whale Harbor , her fifth novel, was a revelation. She tracks several generations of one family rooted in Ireland, who migrate to England, Montana, and New York beginning in the 1960s, with intimacy and emotional nuance. Her storytelling gifts as transmitted through the voice of her narrator, the second eldest brother, Mac, are magical.

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Once I finished Whale Harbor , I passed the novel along to my darling, Mark, who is descended from Italian and Finnish immigrants and raised among many Irish immigrants in Butte, Montana. (Butte figures in a few early scenes.) He was equally enthralled (he said he found this tale of eleven brothers in the Irish diaspora “captivating”).

Naturally I wanted to know if this historical novel was autobiographical.…