Kevin O'Connell is a native of New York City, descended from a young

officer of what had, from 1690 to 1792, been the Irish Brigade of the

French army, believed to have arrived in French Canada sometime following

the execution of Queen Marie Antoinette in October 1793. At least one

grandson subsequently returned to Ireland;

Mr. O’Connell’s own grandparents arrived in New York in the early Twentieth Century. 

He holds both Irish and American citizenship.

He has been a serious student of the history of Eighteenth

Century Europe, especially, that of Ireland and France, for much of his life;

one significant aspect of this has been a continuing scholarly as well as

personal interest in the extended O’Connell family.

Mr. O’Connell began the Derrynane Saga in 2014. His first book, Beyond

Derrynane: A Novel of Eighteenth Century Europe, was published in July 2016,

whilst the second, Two Journeys Home: A Novel of Eighteenth Century Europe was

released in November 2017.  Bittersweet Tapestry:  A Novel of Eighteenth Century Europe.

published in November 2019 is the third of four projected volumes. All three books are in 

global circulation and have received a range of positive critical reviews, in the United States, 

the United Kingdom and Europe.

The Saga has been described as being a sweeping, multi-layered story,

populated by an array of colourfully-complex characters, whose lives and

stories play out in a series of striking settings. Set against the drama of

Europe in the early stages of significant change, the book dramatizes the

roles which have never before been treated in fiction played by a small

number of expatriate Irish of the fallen Gaelic Aristocracy at the courts of

Catholic Europe. It is with Bittersweet Tapestry that O’Connell again focuses

in greater detail on their lives in English-occupied Ireland.

An alumnus of Don Bosco Preparatory School, Mr. O’Connell is a

graduate of Providence College and Georgetown University Law Centre.