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The Jar & Harp
Kaelyn McAuliffe is getting married in six weeks.
It’s going to be a big Irish wedding in an old Buffalo church. The reception will inaugurate her new events venue next door to the family’s longtime Irish pub, the Jar & Harp. Kaelyn grew up at the Jar & Harp; now she’s the pub manager, and in line to own it. She thought she knew everything about it.
Everything except how it got its name.
Kaelyn’s grandmother and owner of the Jar & Harp, Claire, has always brushed off queries with a vague response, “It’s traditional.”
The tradition, it seems, goes back at least five generations, and originates with a jolly Irish peddler named Jasper Harp, and his little jars of sunshine. Are they magical? Or the gift of a guardian angel?
After a long afternoon of astounding stories about her great-grandmothers Fiona, Sinead, Aine and Mairead, Kaelyn still can’t decide.
Until she has her own Jasper Harp moment.
It’s going to be a big Irish wedding in an old Buffalo church. The reception will inaugurate her new events venue next door to the family’s longtime Irish pub, the Jar & Harp. Kaelyn grew up at the Jar & Harp; now she’s the pub manager, and in line to own it. She thought she knew everything about it.
Everything except how it got its name.
Kaelyn’s grandmother and owner of the Jar & Harp, Claire, has always brushed off queries with a vague response, “It’s traditional.”
The tradition, it seems, goes back at least five generations, and originates with a jolly Irish peddler named Jasper Harp, and his little jars of sunshine. Are they magical? Or the gift of a guardian angel?
After a long afternoon of astounding stories about her great-grandmothers Fiona, Sinead, Aine and Mairead, Kaelyn still can’t decide.
Until she has her own Jasper Harp moment.
464 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 2, 2018
3 people are currently reading
About the author
Kate Burke
8 books3 followers Kate Burke now lives in the land of eternal sunshine, central California. The weather forecast seldom changes: hot and dry. The most perilous part of driving is keeping the sun out of your eyes. However, put Kate back on slick, wet, icy roads, and her native Buffalonian driver’s instinct takes over. She’ll get you home without incident.
Setting and characters in Kate’s latest book, THE JAR & HARP, derive authenticity from Kate’s continent-spanning experience: her childhood near Buffalo, New York, twelve years living in the farm country of central Nebraska, and her recent years in California.
Some might decry her depiction of icy cold Buffalo as a hackneyed cliché, but it was part of Kate’s childhood reality. “I was a freshman in high school during the winter of 1976-77. I remember how crummy that winter was. I personally recall the Blizzard of ’77. During my driving test [for her license], I had to parallel park between a car and a snowbank,” she recalls. (She passed.)
Kaelyn, Jessica, Claire and all the characters inhabiting the fictional Buffalo pub The Jar & Harp just deal with the cold, the snow, the ice, the way all Buffalonians do.
Nebraska’s devilish prairie winds and shrilling bugs aggravate her Irish-born protagonist Mairéad, but Kate loved them.
“You would come around the corner of the house, and the wind would just about knock you off your feet,” she recalls. “You would literally feel your knees start to buckle. But no matter what you were thinking or how you were feeling, when that wind hit you, you knew you were alive, and you knew you were a damn small bit of nothing in the huge scheme of things.”
Growing up in Clarence, then a far-flung, rural suburb of Buffalo, Kate read about those Great Plains prairies in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s LITTLE HOUSE books. Decades later, she met Nebraska native Ron Burke online, in a writers’ forum. By then, Ron had recently retired back to the Burke family farm, from a mid-level management career with AT&T, and Kate was teaching high school English. After months of mostly electronic exchanges, they met in person, and fell in love. Kate moved out to the farm to be with him.
Listening to Ron’s amazing stories of growing up on the farm during and after the World War II years, Kate realized she had her own “Little House” tales that needed telling. Five books, all of her BLUE RIVER BOY series, weren’t enough to relate them all, but, Kate says, “I had to put together many, separate events and instances from Ron’s childhood in a meaningful way. I couldn’t get them all in.”
Kate has described the BLUE RIVER BOY books as the 20th century ending to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 19th century LITTLE HOUSE books. “I know some people must think I’m trying to ride [Wilder’s] coattails,” Kate says, “but it really is just that way.” Despite the huge changes that overtook personal and national life during the sixty years between the two, “Ron and Laura Ingalls could have traded places, and each one would have been perfectly comfortable.”
Kate also offers a fast, thought-provoking read in her novella AN UNCOMMON CONFESSION. Her Roman Catholic upbringing features heavily here, as the protagonist, Diana, makes a confession to Father Matt about having killed three people already, and her desire to kill a fourth.
“I like dynamic characters who grow morally,” Kate says. “I don’t create evil for the sake of evil. Any nastiness that shows up in one of my books is there to provoke a moral response.”
Kate is in the early stages of a new novel working the same themes. She sees a publication date sometime in 2019.
Contact Kate at kateburke.author@gmail.com.
Setting and characters in Kate’s latest book, THE JAR & HARP, derive authenticity from Kate’s continent-spanning experience: her childhood near Buffalo, New York, twelve years living in the farm country of central Nebraska, and her recent years in California.
Some might decry her depiction of icy cold Buffalo as a hackneyed cliché, but it was part of Kate’s childhood reality. “I was a freshman in high school during the winter of 1976-77. I remember how crummy that winter was. I personally recall the Blizzard of ’77. During my driving test [for her license], I had to parallel park between a car and a snowbank,” she recalls. (She passed.)
Kaelyn, Jessica, Claire and all the characters inhabiting the fictional Buffalo pub The Jar & Harp just deal with the cold, the snow, the ice, the way all Buffalonians do.
Nebraska’s devilish prairie winds and shrilling bugs aggravate her Irish-born protagonist Mairéad, but Kate loved them.
“You would come around the corner of the house, and the wind would just about knock you off your feet,” she recalls. “You would literally feel your knees start to buckle. But no matter what you were thinking or how you were feeling, when that wind hit you, you knew you were alive, and you knew you were a damn small bit of nothing in the huge scheme of things.”
Growing up in Clarence, then a far-flung, rural suburb of Buffalo, Kate read about those Great Plains prairies in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s LITTLE HOUSE books. Decades later, she met Nebraska native Ron Burke online, in a writers’ forum. By then, Ron had recently retired back to the Burke family farm, from a mid-level management career with AT&T, and Kate was teaching high school English. After months of mostly electronic exchanges, they met in person, and fell in love. Kate moved out to the farm to be with him.
Listening to Ron’s amazing stories of growing up on the farm during and after the World War II years, Kate realized she had her own “Little House” tales that needed telling. Five books, all of her BLUE RIVER BOY series, weren’t enough to relate them all, but, Kate says, “I had to put together many, separate events and instances from Ron’s childhood in a meaningful way. I couldn’t get them all in.”
Kate has described the BLUE RIVER BOY books as the 20th century ending to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 19th century LITTLE HOUSE books. “I know some people must think I’m trying to ride [Wilder’s] coattails,” Kate says, “but it really is just that way.” Despite the huge changes that overtook personal and national life during the sixty years between the two, “Ron and Laura Ingalls could have traded places, and each one would have been perfectly comfortable.”
Kate also offers a fast, thought-provoking read in her novella AN UNCOMMON CONFESSION. Her Roman Catholic upbringing features heavily here, as the protagonist, Diana, makes a confession to Father Matt about having killed three people already, and her desire to kill a fourth.
“I like dynamic characters who grow morally,” Kate says. “I don’t create evil for the sake of evil. Any nastiness that shows up in one of my books is there to provoke a moral response.”
Kate is in the early stages of a new novel working the same themes. She sees a publication date sometime in 2019.
Contact Kate at kateburke.author@gmail.com.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 24, 2018
Kept me interested
This book has a lot of interesting action I didn't expect. I thought it would be more like a romance. It is romantic but not like a formula romance. The characters seem realistic even though magical things happen. I liked it alot.
This book has a lot of interesting action I didn't expect. I thought it would be more like a romance. It is romantic but not like a formula romance. The characters seem realistic even though magical things happen. I liked it alot.
Displaying 1 of 1 review