Books: Debut novel inspired by double tragedy at lighthouse

A former student in Cork has just had her debut novel published, inspired by a visit to remote Skellig Michael off the Kerry coast.

June O’Sullivan wrote The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife on the back of a visit to the tourist attraction, after she saw an inscription on a grave there, marking the deaths of two young boys, sons of a lighthouse keeper, who died in 1868 and 1869, aged just two and four.

They were Patrick and William Callaghan, sons of William and Kate.

The discovery ignited June’s imagination as her own children were very young at the time. She felt deeply for Kate Callaghan, living in a precarious location, trying to keep her children safe.

As June says, she is always aware of danger, particularly when children are young and adventurous.

The writer’s formative young adult years were spent in Cork.

She left her native Limerick in 1997 to study English and French at UCC. She went on to do a Masters there, on the author Edna O’Brien and the notion of feminine writing.

“I’m delighted to see that Edna O’Brien is acclaimed now,” says June of the literary legend who died last year.

“When I told people I was doing a thesis on her, they were kind of appalled; I could have said Jilly Cooper and the dirty books.”

To pay her way through college in Cork in the late 1990s, June worked in the former Crow’s Nest bar at Victoria Cross, and in the nearby Kingsley Hotel. She lived in a student apartment in the area.

“When I finished the MA, I kind of accidentally started a Ph.D,” she says. “At the time, I was working as a full-time restaurant manager in the Crow’s Nest.

“At the end of that year, my supervisor, Pat Coughlan, said it was one or the other. She gave me a bit of a reality check. It’s hard to get tenure (in a university).”

Asked if she really wanted an academic life, June decided to go travelling for a year with her now husband Declan, taking in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and California. “We limped home, broke, but had a great time.”

June was really torn between journalism and teaching. While an undergraduate, she had worked in Campus Radio at UCC and contributed to a student newspaper.

“Journalism is something I thought I’d like. But I just got the sense that it wasn’t the number one thing I wanted to do.

“I wasn’t even sure about teaching. Back in those days, people who did an arts degree would do the higher diploma in education. I turned it down the first time I got the offer to do it. My mother was appalled.

“I did some substitute teaching after my travels. I really liked it and went back to college in Limerick to do the diploma in education.”

June, who is a primary school teacher in Portmagee in Co. Kerry, lives on nearby Valentia Island with Declan and children, Layla (14), Dylan (12) and Joni (9).

Having enjoyed living in Galway, June and Declan (an online business coach) decided to settle in Kerry where he is from.

The family is used to bad weather. The recent Storm Éowyn resulted in power cuts. “The weather hits us hard, but the summertime on Valentia is fantastic. It’s like a different place.”

Their house, which they built, is geared for the effects of storms. “We have a gas hob, a stove for heating, and none of the showers are electric.”

June got the idea for her novel in 2014 and started researching it.

“I had a bit of it written. In 2020, I did an online writing course for two weeks with the Irish Writers’ Centre called ‘Finish Your Novel’. I really knuckled down.”

With covid keeping her at home, June had the first draft of her historical novel, set in 1867, written by April, 2021.

She says there wasn’t much on record about the Callaghan family. “That’s unusual because with most lighthouse keepers, the record- keeping was good.

“I think some of the records in this case had gone astray over the years. I did a bit of digging and visited a local historian, John Golden, in Portmagee who helped me.”

However, there are no death certificates for the two boys.

“It’s not known what happened to them. I looked into common causes of child mortality in the 1860s. They were what would now be survivable diseases such as bronchitis, pneumonia and croup.”

June adds: “Because of the landscape on Skellig Michael, people had died falling off a cliff.”

It would be a spoiler to say how the boys died in the novel.

The tragic Callaghan family “lost an awful lot of kids,” adds June. “I think the mother had 11 pregnancies. Only four lived. Only one of the adult children had a child.

“I’d love to find out where the descendants of this line are.”

In the book, there is tension when the assistant lighthouse-keeper arrives with his wife. “She is very cold and has her own troubles and disappointments in life. Both of the lighthouse keepers’ wives are pregnant.”

While June more or less knew what the ending of her book would be, she didn’t plan the novel, but worked on it every day, even if that just meant thinking about it while doing the washing-up.

June has a four-book contract with Poolbeg. She didn’t get any advance but considers herself very lucky as a debut novelist to have “a home for my next three books”.

Her second novel, also historical, is based on a female aviator from Co. Limerick called Lady Heath.

“I have a notion for the third book but don’t know what the fourth one will be,” says June.

“Historical novels are lovely to work on because there are no end of stories.