“CURSED – THE BLACK DONNELLYS OF BIDDULPH COUNTY”   a novel by Keith Ross Leckie

Based on the true story of the “Black” Donnellys, this epic novel is the iconic tale of the Old World and its sins visited upon the new. It is Romeo and Juliet, Hatfields and McCoys, The Big Valley, Deadwood, The Quiet Man , Dallas and The Godfather all in one. It is the apocryphal tale of a tribal battle centuries old that crosses the Atlantic with Irish refugees who wish to find a new life in North America. What many find is death in Lucan, Ontario.

In the midst of the feuds and famine of Tipperary, Ireland 1845, Jim Donnelly and Johannah Magee fall passionately in love. She is the beautiful daughter of an affluent estate Manager, he the rebellious son of dispossessed parents. With her father’s men in hot pursuit and a sizable price on his head, they board one of the immigrant ships set for Canada to start a new life and put the troubles of the old country behind them. 

But thousands of miles away in rural Ontario, they find the feuds and vendettas of Ireland very much alive. Jim must make a place for his young family not just with his back but with his fists. After one fateful brawl a man lies dead and Jim Donnelly as a convicted murderer must leave his seven sons and daughter to serve fifteen years in the infamous Kingston Prison.

When Jim returns to the farm, bitter and brutalized after serving his sentence, he finds the Donnelly family lead by the Matriarch Johannah has become one of the most powerful of Biddulph County, loved by some and hated by others. Notorious as both lovers and fighters, the handsome Donnelly boys have many friends and just as many enemies. There is the club-footed eldest Will who can swing a shillelagh or play a fiddle with equal skill, James, with a penchant for whisky and arson, the horseman Michael who’s black curls and silver tongue charms the ladies, the hot-headed Patrick, the weak-minded Robert, John the dreamy-eyed poet and big Tom, the evil one, with a sadistic love of violence, and the beautiful young Jenny, who at sixteen no man in their right mind would try to court.

As the returned patriarch of this powerful family, Jim sets about settling a few scores of his own. Soon after their father’s return, certain citizens of Lucan have had enough of the Donnellys bullying them, burning their barns in revenge and seducing their sisters and daughters. At midnight on February 4, 1880, a mob of 40 armed men in woman’s clothing and carnival masks ride out for the Donnelly farms. Sustained by whisky and the blessings of the local priest, their goal is to wipe the Donnelly family from the face of the earth.