In time, Fate is a matter of choice...
...chance...
Did You Pay the Piper Man? by Hanna Nielson
A debut literary fiction magic realism novel
LOGLINE
On a winter's night in Celtic Tiger era Belfast, an ex-boxer, an American writer, and busy hotel manager search for redemption as timelines split apart - and only the tune of a homeless piper man can heal the rift.
BOOK BLURB
Belfast 2005. On a busy night before Christmas, the struggles of a former boxer, a young American writer, and a beleaguered hotel manager intertwine when timelines split. Each searches for redemption as their fates unravel, and the difference between choice or chance is the flip of a coin. Weaving through it all is a homeless piper man whose haunting melody holds the key to healing the rift - if only someone will listen.
Brian Legarty, an ex-boxer still suffering the effects of a head injury that ended his career, is at his wits end tending bar alone for a surging crowd that won't stop coming. When he crosses the road to a luxury hotel to ask for help, a misunderstanding between mates turns violent - but in another timeline, he mets the beautiful American writer, and their star-crossed love story begins.
It's one of several stories that alternate between alienation and connection during this one-night Odyssey through Belfast, across time, into the Celtic underworld and back again.
A richly textured and psychologically observant tapestry of multiple storylines,
Did You Pay the Piper Man? is set during an age of heady excess and uneasy changes of post-Troubles Belfast. But it is, above all, a celebration of friendship in all its forms that can redeem us across the any divide, even death.
U?N嶯ll Press, 2025
