The Great Wall of Ballygall

Seamus Boshell

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9798385270590
  9798385270606
• eBook ISBN:
  9798385270613
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

The novel follows Finn McCormack, who returns to his Irish hometown, Ballygall, from Boston to fulfill his late father’s two parting wishes—to be buried in the town graveyard and to reinstate a fourth-century wall around the town. In the latter, he is seemingly aided by Hugh O’Neill, aka The Toll Queen, a car toll mogul. The ensuing chaos of the wall’s construction inflames the town, irrevocably altering the lives of its inhabitants, including that of Finn’s mother, Maeve. When she reveals a shocking secret from her past and then sells their home and family business, Finn’s sense of identity and community is shattered.

Meanwhile, Finn’s first love, Obee, returns from London to assist her Nigerian-born parents in The Battle for Ballygall. The wall will cut her housing estate out of the town—a move that many residents view as anti-immigrant. She carefully renews her relationship with Finn, who, repelled by The Toll Queen’s tactics, has reversed his opinion on the wall. As they organize the town in opposition and attempt to heal themselves from the ruptures of their shared past, Finn and Obee must also decide whether they will ultimately stay in Ballygall, “a town they once left so well.”

At its core, the novel is about modern Ireland, immigration, emigration, and a young man’s reckoning with his family’s role in its history, past and future.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• A Proper Burial
• My Mother the Murderer
• The Toll Queen Lands at Ballygall
• The B&B (Braid & Barber)
• Dirty Doherty, My Uncle-in-Error
• Wok and Roll, Closed
• A Hospital, A Punch Thrown
• His Holiness Father Seamus O’Shaughnessy
• The Two Murals of Ballygall
• The Bank of Ballygall
• A Tower House Unfit for a Queen
• My Mother Gains Non-Murderous Employment
• Razor Curran the Alleged Muralist
• The Yellowing
• The Ascension of Ballygall
• Doctor Lathey, Attacked
• My Father, in Flashback
• The Charge of a Yellow JCB
• The Purge of Ballygall
• Teddy Boy Filler
• Professor Aedeen O’Reilly & Burke the Butcher, Separately
• A Sell-Out
• Save The Shed
• Doctor Lathey & A Passing Samaritan
• The Battle of The Yellow Ford
• Me and My Mother Get Into It
• A Fu-Fu Fight
• A Parley at Our Not-So-Small-Church
• Our Half-a-Home, Sold
• The Estate With No Name
• The Grave of Young Akinfenwa
• The Great Wall, Finished
• A Ghost Tour of Dublin
• Atonement by Amputation, both, one at a time
• Our Church Taken, Our Holiness Taken
• We’re On The One Road, Singing the One Song
• The Queen of Ballygall
• Underminers Unite
• Straw or Gold?
• The Winker of Ballygall
• The Last Chapter
• Appendix I: A Historical Glance at my Fictional Ancestor, Finn McCool
• Appendix II: A Bit of History Pertaining to Ireland, and The Toll Queen, too