“Morally complex and memorable, The Broken Season is a magnificent debut.”
— Ron Rash, author of Serena (a PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist) and The Caretaker (The New Yorker’s Best Books of the Year selection)
Eve of the Civil War, remote Appalachia, and hundreds of Irish laborers are clawing out a rail tunnel through the granite of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Blasting powder will kill some, rock falls will claim others, and drink, crime, and disease prey on the survivors in their squalid camp. Just convicted of murdering another laborer, young Michael Corvan is soon to be hanged.
When Jeremiah Sweeney, a world-weary priest, arrives to give Corvan his last rites, he stumbles on a secret too dark for the condemned man to confess. Will Sweeney and his assistant, Joe Donnelly, get past the miners’ code of silence?
Will they live to see justice done? Or will they ever leave the mountain alive?
Advance Praise for The Broken Season
In this seamless mixture of truth and imagination, The Broken Season is a stark yet poetic depiction of two Irish immigrants’ search for an elusive redemption in the nineteenth-century South. Haughey is a gifted writer: character, plot, pacing, and language all propel this novel toward a stunning final reckoning. Morally complex and memorable, The Broken Season is a magnificent debut.
— Ron Rash, author of Serena (a PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist) and The Caretaker (The New Yorker’s Best Books of the Year selection)
Part thrilling adventure, part brooding mystery, The Broken Season takes us on a riveting journey to one of the dark and forgotten places of American history. This is an exciting and assured debut from a writer with an intimate grasp of his subject and its landscape.
— Ed O’Loughlin, author of Not Untrue and Not Unkind (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize), Minds of Winter (shortlisted for the Giller Prize) and This is Eden.
Jim Haughey's debut novel reads like that of a seasoned pro. His protagonists, Sweeney and Donnelly, recall some of the finest in historical fiction such as McMurtry's Call and McCrae or O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin. The Broken Season is a compelling mystery, shot through with a rough poetry and dialogue studded with wit and profundity in equal measure. It is the story of damaged men, violent deeds, and the short, hard-scrabble lives of the immigrants who built — and continue to build — America. Haughey's novel bears the hallmark of the best historical fiction: it shines a blood-dimmed light on how we live today. Highly recommended.
—Kevin McCarthy, author of Peeler (A Philadelphia Inquirer Read of the Year) and Irregulars (shortlisted for the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Book of the Year award)
Jim Haughey’s picaresque novel The Broken Season is crisp and beautifully written. At times macabre and often comedic, the tale of Father Jeremiah Sweeney and Joseph Donnelly’s journey proves a major success in this debut. For fans of nineteenth-century literature, The Broken Season is a must-read.
—George Singleton, author of The Curious Lives of Non-Profit Martyrs (a Top 100 Book of 2023 by Kirkus Reviews)
Available from the publisher and wherever books are sold
Please consider ordering from Jim’s North Carolina-based independent publisher, Redhawk Publications, or from bookstores everywhere, especially those independent bookstores hosting Broken Season book events.
Upcoming Events
Jim Haughey will be on the road soon for a series of appearances and lectures to talk about The Broken Season.
Check this space for an updated calendar and be in touch if you’re interested in hosting an event in fall 2026 or in 2027.
Book Launch Celebration, Reading and Book Signing in Dublin, Ireland
August 12, 2026, at 6 p.m., Kehoe’s Pub, Dublin
Clemson Emeritus College, Reading and Book Signing
September 25, 2026, 11:30 a.m.