The engaging tale of the fortunes and misfortunes of the fictional Tolan Family spans the globe and evokes mirth and tears throughout the volumes. This is a family that goes out and makes things happen! The stories, which span from 1779 to the present day, are narrated from a study in an old family house in Girvan, Scotland.
Banking, Beer and Robert The Bruce, the first novel in The Book of Tolan, introduces vividly etched family characters with a humor that will have old Monty Python fans rolling in their graves with merriment and has enough wacky ideas to keep the reader glued to each page.
Murphy Patrick Tolan, born in 1779, is the first in a line of the remembered Tolans. With the famous potato famine of the early nineteenth century, Ireland’s food is running short and Murphy, as with all other Irish folk, needs to get across the Irish Sea pretty urgently. He finds out belatedly that being single is a disadvantage.
The family manuscripts begin in Scotland. A very large leather bound book appears in Murphy’s attic one day with a yellow note instructing Murphy to start recording his life and then pass it on. It takes him a couple of years to pluck up the courage to write in this large book that is certainly not from his era, nor ours!
The adventures that are recorded in the book over the generations are funny and filled with the fantasy and drama that most of us wish we had in our own lives.
