Very Old Bones

The Phelan clan has gathered for a most unusual event: the reading of Peter Phelan’s will - by Peter himself. But the Phelans have always been a bit eccentric, larger-than-life in both their sins and their salvations. In this extraordinary novel, William Kennedy chronicles the complex, moving, and sometimes hilarious saga of a hard-pressed, hard-drinking Irish-American family. From Malachi, the nineteenth-century patriarch whose religious fervor drove him to the ultimate sin; to Francis, Pete…