Page Turner: Order from a higher power

What is your latest book about?

“Mysteries of My Father” opens with a truly mysterious event: a 1998 phone call from Jersey City’s city hall telling me that a gold ring with an inscription that read: “To Sheriff Teddy Fleming from Mayor Frank Hague” had been found in France’s Argonne Forest. I had lost it in 1968 while researching an article on the 50th anniversary of the greatest battle of World War I. My father, Teddy Fleming, who had fought in the battle, had given me the ring shortly before he died in 1957. I decided I was being told by a higher power that it was time for me to write the story of my long struggle to understand and love my father. The story begins with Mayo-born David and Mary Fleming and their four children in Jersey City’s 1890 slums, where if you admitted you were Irish Catholic you could not get a job. It continues with my father’s rise to power in Jersey City’s no-holds-barred political organization, led by Boss Frank Hague.

What is your writing routine? Are there any ideal conditions?

I get up and get to work, rain or shine. It’s my job — or better — my calling. I remember asking my first boss, a bestselling writer named Fulton Oursler: “How do you write a book?” He told me the basic answer was the application of the seat of your pants to a chair in front of a typewriter (now a computer). Write at least four pages a day and at the end of the year you’ve got a book – or the rough draft of one.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

There is only one way to find out if you’re a writer: write. At least as important is submitting your work for publication and overcoming the fear of rejection.

Name three books that are memorable in terms of your reading pleasure.

“The Purple Shamrock” by Joseph Dineen — the unfictionalized story of Boston’s Mayor James Michael Curley by a great reporter. “Banished Children of Eve” by Peter A. Quinn — an epic novel about the Irish Americans in the New York Draft Riots of 1863, and “True Confessions” by John Gregory Dunne– a hard-eyed novel about Irish-Americans in California, secular and clerical.

What book are you currently reading?

“A Party of Mad Fellows” by Frank A. Boyle. It’s about the Irish regiments in the Army of the Potomac.

Is there a book you wish you had written?

Robert Penn Warren’s “All The King’s Men.” It’s the greatest American political novel. Set in Louisiana, it’s modeled loosely on the career of Senator Huey “The Kingfish” Long. But it could have happened anywhere in America. It takes you inside the combat and the corruption that has always pervaded American politics – and always will.

Name a book you were pleasantly surprised by.

When I started William Faulkner’s “Intruder in the Dust,” I expected Southern tragedy. Instead, it’s funny! The main black character, Lucas Beauchamp, made me laugh out loud at times over the way he discomfited the whites.

If you could meet one author, living or dead, who would it be?

Herman Melville. Like him, I sailed across those immense Pacific distances to strange islands in my U.S. Navy days. It does things to your soul. For me, the greatest compliment I’ve received as a writer was a review that compared my novel, “Time and Tide,” set in the World War II Pacific, to “Moby Dick.”

What book changed your life?

These days, few people remember “Oliver Wiswell” by Kenneth Roberts. It’s the American Revolution seen through the eyes of an intelligent, honorable loyalist. I read it when I was 16 and it made me decide to become a historian as well as a novelist.

What is your favorite spot in Ireland?

The ruins of Coole Park, where my favorite poet, William Butler Yeats, often stayed with his patron, Lady Gregory.

You’re Irish if….

You believe in luck. If you don’t believe in it, read “Mysteries of My Father.” Teddy Fleming will convince you it’s important. Did I say “important”? I meant “crucial.”