The Great Wall of Ballygall
- Fiction
- Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2026
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Publisher's Description
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.
Endorsements (3)
“Fantastical, comical, and richly plied with home truths about a changing but in some respects unchanged Ireland, grappling with its past and imbued with dark family secrets, The Great Wall of Ballygall is a deeply satirical, imaginative, wild-ride tale like no other novel you will have read.”
“This audacious, kaleidoscopic novel features an unforgettable cast of characters from Ireland, Nigeria, and America, all of them determined to live at high velocity as they hurtle into vexed modernity. Antic yet sobering, hilarious yet soulful, the novel’s many moving parts ultimately cohere into an indelible group portrait sure to take up permanent residence in the reader’s grateful heart.”
“Seamus Boshell’s The Great Wall of Ballygall is pure music and magic, a reader’s delight. My god, the writing! Lucid and lyrical, amusing and wise, not a word out of place. What do they call it? Perfect pitch? Well, if a book can have it, this one does. And what a story our charming narrator, Finn McCormack, tells us: comedic and insightful, tender and stoic. A tale of love and mad dreams, family and land. A glorious piece of literature and a profound work of the imagination. Bravo, Seamus Boshell!!”
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