An Irish Country Welcome by Patrick Taylor – June 2026

There is too much going on in Pine Bush Area Public Library’s copy of An Irish Country Welcome. There’s a talent show on July 5, 1969 in Ballybuckleboo. One of the characters in the book has a stroke, at the end of the show. Thank goodness there’s a doctor in the house.

Because this is in Northern Ireland, the “Troubles” really get going, that year, and they would go on for thirty years in real life. In the fiction books, Patrick Taylor downplayed the “troubles” until near the end of his series. He does not let them overwhelm Welcome.

Dr. Fingal O’Reilly and Dr. Barry Laverty hire a new man to join their medical practice. Dr. Sebastian Carson is always running off, as soon as work is over. Is he feckless and irresponsible, or does his family have a dark secret? Barry’s best friend, Jack Mills, want to marry a Catholic woman, and won’t that cause an explosion in the Protestant Mills family?

Dr. O’Reilly and his wife Kitty meet her unofficial niece to show her the Giant’s Causeway, on the Irish coast. Dr. Barry Laverty and his wife Sue are going to be parents but isn’t there always something going wrong?

Like I said, there is too much going on in An Irish Country Welcome. I read and reread it anyway, because I cannot look away. People in the book will tell you that “a baby brings its own welcome.” And this series of books is very welcoming. Come back to the village of Ballybucklebo in time for the talent show. You will be glad you did.