New novel set on Louth’s Cooley Peninsula reimagines famine flight

Retired lecturer Tom Torley, originally from Newry, County Down, has published a new novel, The Tracks We Leave, that reimagines historical events through the lens of those displaced, defiant, and determined to survive.

Set in the shadow of the Irish Famine in 1847, the novel follows two young men who flee the devastation of Louth's Cooley peninsula after an act of resistance, embarking on a perilous journey to America. There, their path crosses with the legendary Apache warrior Victorio and his sister Lozen, whose defiant struggle against colonial forces becomes a mirror to the Irish experience of displacement and resistance.

“This novel explores the hidden histories that connect people across continents,” says Tom Torley. “Whether in the famine fields of Ireland or the borderlands of the  America’s Southwest, ordinary people have always resisted oppression — and that spirit of survival links us across time and place.”

A former college lecturer in Literature, Tom has spent a career promoting writing as a tool for liberation and self-determination. His academic work has helped reshape Eurocentric literary curricula, and his lifelong love of the Irish countryside, particularly the Cooley peninsula, where his family has lived for five generations, deeply informs his writing.

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Born into a family rooted in the sea, the docks, and working-class politics of Newry, he brings a unique perspective to historical fiction — one that champions the voices too often left out of official narratives.

The Tracks We Leave is now available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle format.