A New Day Dawning is set in the unreal world of Rookery Rally, which portrays Tipperary countryside and a hillside community in the late 1940s. It follows a group of children through their formative years as their personal beliefs and personalities develop. Alternating acts of good and evil are carried out by the children as they struggle to set their own moral compasses. They walk three miles to bring back a puppy for an old man left broken-hearted by the death of his dog; they accompany their parents on a hunt and share in the act of killing foxes and their cubs; they drown a tinker's pup; they turn over a new leaf and promise to be good after a stern fire-and-brimstone sermon. There's stop-and-start progression within the children's moral development as they try to prove themselves good and worthy people on their jaunty adolescent journey towards adulthood. Will the good outweigh the bad? Will optimism outweigh the cynicism of today's world?

 

This book has been graded for interest at 14-16 years.

There are 152 pages in this book. This book was published 2016 by Troubador Publishing .

Edward Forde Hickey spent his early life in Dolla, Tipperary. He has been writing sporadically since leaving University, where he studied Classics. Edward now lives in Kent with his wife and has three sons, but still spends time in Tipperary on his small hillside farm. His first novel, The Early Morning Light, was published by Matador in 2015.