Family Saga
6 primary works
Book 1
In high school, Charles "Chucky" Cronin O'Malley is a short, wiry youth with flaming red hair and a gift for the blarney. Too small for the important positions on the football team, he is the ball holder on kickoffs and an honorary "fourth string" quarterback. He becomes a legend when a comedy of errors and lucky mistakes helps him lead his team to the city championship. All Chucky wants out of life is to go to Notre Dame, become an accountant, and have a nice, orderly life, but the Deity seems to have other plans for him. Again and again his courage and compassion get him into impossible scrapes - with black marketeers, border patrols, his commanding officer, and the U.S. Army. Only his trademark combination of quick wit and blind luck (and maybe a little Heavenly intervention) sees him safely out of harm's way.
Book 2
Once again best-selling author, Andrew M Greeley, weaves his magical spell in this warm, romantic, coming-of-age sequel to A MIDWINTER'S TALE. It is 1949, and chuck O'Malley is a soldier, just returning from post-war Germany. His is the story of a young man searching for his place in life - and for the partner to share his dreams. But first he must answer the question "What is love"? - the desire to possess the other person totally - or the desire to be totally possessed?
Book 3
"Happy families are all alike," said Tolstoy, and the O'Malley's are one of the happiest, if slightly crazy, families in current fiction. A Christmas Wedding continues the saga of Chucky, the youngest son who wants to live the quiet life of an accountant and raise a nice Catholic family. Fate, of course, has other plans for Chucky, in the person of the beautiful Rosemarie, his off-again on-again nemesis from the time he saved her life when he was a young man.
Thrown out of Notre Dame on trumped up charges, Chucky ends up going to the University of Chicago. The only problem: his lifelong enemy Rosemarie is a fellow student. They decide to be "just friends," and while they battle with each other, "just friends" turns into something neither of them expected.
Thrown out of Notre Dame on trumped up charges, Chucky ends up going to the University of Chicago. The only problem: his lifelong enemy Rosemarie is a fellow student. They decide to be "just friends," and while they battle with each other, "just friends" turns into something neither of them expected.
Book 4
Chucky can't stay out of trouble, and his loving and devoted wife Rosemarie is often, if not always, by his side. Showing up at the trouble spots of the world seems to be Chucky's destiny. Greeley recalls the turbulent and history-changing events of the 1960s with fondness and clarity. The fourth of the O'Malley chronicles is narrated by the ravishing Rosemarie, dedicated wife of our intrepid and trouble-prone hero, Chucky Cronin O'Malley. Destined to be compared to the Lanny Budd novels of Upton Sinclair and the Chicago novels of James T Farrell, SEPTEMBER SONG follows the O'Malley saga from Chucky's appointment as Ambassador to Germany by President Kennedy (the youngest ambassador in history), to his resignation after a serious disagreement with President Johnson, to his in-your-face involvement in Selma, Alabama, the Chicago Democratic Convention and the Vietnam War.
Book 6
It's 1978 and America, exhausted by Vietnam and Watergate, seems to be suffering from a massive hangover. Chucky O'Malley knows how the country feels; approaching fifty, he finds himself in the grip of a debilitating mid-life crisis. He hasn't lost his faith, exactly, but does feel disillusioned with the world. Fortunately he doesn't have to face this challenge alone. With the loving support of his family, and especially his irrepressible and adoring wife, Rosemarie, he just might discover a...SECOND SPRING.
Book 6
Father Andrew M. Greeley, one of America's most popular and trusted storytellers, has long charmed readers with his continuing chronicles of the crazy O'Malleys, an irrepressible and resilient Irish American family caught up in the rush of modern American history. The previous novels in the O'Malley saga, including "A Midwinter's Tale" and "Second Spring", have taken the longtime Chicago residents from the early post war era through the turmoil and malaise of the 1970s. Now, in "Golden Years", Chucky O'Malley and his ever-growing clan enter the Reagan years - even as a series of painful shocks tests the family's strength as never before. The death of Chucky's elderly father brings the entire brood together to mourn, but what should be a time of unity is disrupted by the increasingly erratic behaviour of Chucky's unhappy and emotionally unstable older sister, igniting a family crisis that ultimately threatens the lives of both young and old O'Malleys. Furthermore, as if their own struggles are not enough to cope with, Chucky and his wife, Rosemarie, also find themselves called upon to help an old high school friend whose beloved wife and daughter have disappeared inexplicably.
To find Brigid "Bride" O'Brien and her innocent child, Chucky and Rosemarie must untangle a shadowy mystery that stretches from the bogs of Old Erin to the darkest chapters of the cold war...
To find Brigid "Bride" O'Brien and her innocent child, Chucky and Rosemarie must untangle a shadowy mystery that stretches from the bogs of Old Erin to the darkest chapters of the cold war...