<div>Joseph Caldwell&rsquo;s rollicking Pig Trilogy, a charmingly romantic three-part tale of an American in contemporary Ireland Aaron McCloud has come to Ireland from New York City to walk the beach and pity himself for the cold indifference of the young lady in his writing class he had chosen to be his love. The pig will have none of that.What the pig eventually does is root up in Aunt Kitty&rsquo;s vegetable garden evidence of a possible transgression that each of the novel&rsquo;s three Irish characters is convinced the other probably benefited from. The resolution of this hilarious mystery in The Pig Did It&mdash;the first entry in Mr. Caldwell&rsquo;s Pig Trilogy&mdash;inspires both comic eloquence and a theatrically colorful canvas depicting the brooding Irish land and seascape. And in The Pig Comes to Dinner and The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven, all of the charming characters of the first book return for more tragicomedy and hijinks, told in Caldwell&rsquo;s uniquely theatrical style.</div>

The Pig Trilogy

<div>When a photographer witnesses a violent crime in New York&rsquo;s Lower East Side, he hunts down the missing camera that may hold answers Eugene is a midwesterner living in New York, an erstwhile Catholic and not-quite-openly-gay photographer. When a Holy Week pageant in the gritty Lower East Side erupts into a riot, he is sucked into the city&rsquo;s shadowy depths. While photographing the parade, Eugene has his eye on a handsome teen, but when things turn violent the youth is stabbed and Eugene&rsquo;s camera is stolen. To find the camera and its precious film, which may provide evidence, Eugene has to become acquainted with a seedy, unfamiliar world, and hold on to his sanity in the process. In Such Dark Places is a thrilling debut novel of awakening and obsession. </div>

In Such Dark Places

<div>An American in Ireland encounters mystery, romance&mdash;and an extremely disruptive pig: &ldquo;Very funny . . . a payoff that is as unexpected as it is satisfying&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly). Possibly the most obstreperous character in literature since Buck Mulligan in James Joyce&rsquo;s Ulysses, Mr. Caldwell&rsquo;s pig distracts everyone from his or her chosen mission. Aaron McCloud has come to Ireland from New York City to walk the beach and pity himself for the cold indifference of the young lady in his writing class he had chosen to be his love. The pig will have none of that.Aaron&rsquo;s aunt Kitty McCloud, a novelist, wants to get on with her bestselling business of correcting the classics, at the moment Jane Eyre, which in Kitty&rsquo;s version will end with Rochester&rsquo;s throwing himself from the tower, not the madwoman&rsquo;s. The pig will have not a bit of that. What the pig eventually does is root up in Aunt Kitty&rsquo;s vegetable garden evidence of a possible transgression that each of the novel&rsquo;s three Irish characters is convinced the other probably benefited from. How this hilarious mystery is resolved in The Pig Did It&mdash;the first entry in Mr. Caldwell&rsquo;s forthcoming Pig Trilogy&mdash;inspires both comic eloquence and a theatrically colorful canvas depicting the brooding Irish land and seascape.</div>

The Pig Did It

<div>&ldquo;A comic triumph&rdquo; set in a haunted Irish castle from the author of The Pig Did It (Richmond Times-Dispatch).All of the charming characters of the previous book are present again in this delightful new story. Kitty McCloud, now married to Kieran Sweeney, her former rival in one of their district&rsquo;s oldest blood feuds, has bought an ancient Irish castle with the profits from her popular revisions of classic novels like Jane Eyre. Kitty&rsquo;s American cousin, Aaron McCloud, has arrived with his new wife, the former Lolly McKeever, to redeliver to Kitty and Kieran their wedding gift of the troublesome pig, who is not at all welcome at the castle. But over their lighthearted discord hangs a weightier problem&mdash;Kitty&rsquo;s new home is inhabited by two comely ghosts from out of the castle&rsquo;s troubled past. How this haunting couple is dealt with serves only to embellish the allure and humor of Mr. Caldwell&rsquo;s uniquely theatrical storytelling.</div>

The Pig Comes to Dinner

<div>&ldquo;A triumphant conclusion&rdquo; to the spirited Irish trilogy from the author of The Pig Did It and The Pig Comes to Dinner (Richmond Times-Dispatch). Kitty McCloud, the trilogy&rsquo;s leading lady, would let these words stand, even were she a reviser of aphorisms rather than a &ldquo;fixer&rdquo; of great literary works by the likes of Bronte, Hardy, and Eliot no less, by writing &ldquo;improved&rdquo; versions of which she makes an outsized bestselling living that affords her the dubious luxury of living in contentious bliss with her husband, Kieran Sweeney, in their ancient, haunted Irish Castle Kissane. For in Mr. Caldwell&rsquo;s new comedy&mdash;well, tragicomedy, in the truly Irish sense&mdash;almost nothing seems to be over&mdash;disappeared characters rematerialize, romances that seemed dead burst back to ardent life, and even Taddy and Brid, Castle Kissane&rsquo;s comely spirits, find new meaning in Yogi&rsquo;s remark as they resolve themselves into much-longed-for conclusions. And the pig, ah yes, the pig! The pig who started it all by rooting up the bones of the past and tipping many lives topsy turvy&mdash;that pig goes wee wee wee all the way&mdash;er&mdash;home.</div>

The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven

<div>A young carpenter finds himself in turmoil as his wife rapidly descends into mental illness The Deer at the River follows an especially intense period in the life of Noah Dubbins, a young carpenter and father of three living in rural New Hampshire. Noah&rsquo;s life changes drastically when he returns from work one day to find his wife, Ruth, behaving erratically and reenacting the birth of their youngest son. Ruth is committed to a psychiatric hospital and Noah is left to look after their children on his own. In his loneliness, he wrestles with his lust for an old flame and a burgeoning confusion about his sexuality. With financial problems, a family to raise, and increasing grief over his wife&rsquo;s condition, how will Noah cope? The Deer at the River is a wrenching parable of everyday spiritual turmoil. </div>

The Deer at the River

<div>An American opera singer travels to Naples and becomes embroiled in his strangest role yet Michael Ruane is an obscure American opera singer who arrives in Naples to play a small part in an important production of Tosca and star in his own staging of a little-known Benjamin Britten opera. The work comes at a particularly trying time, when he&rsquo;s still raw with grief after his New York lover&rsquo;s death from AIDS. As the productions get under way, Ruane is offered an unusual part: that of the &ldquo;uncle from Rome&rdquo; at a local wedding. According to tradition, the presence of the uncle from Rome at important events confers prestige on the family. However, Ruane is soon enmeshed in a drama that surpasses any role he has played on the stage. The Uncle from Rome is a brilliant and colorfully imagined novel filled with theatrics of operatic proportions.</div>

The Uncle from Rome

<div>A nun struggles to keep her order afloat while her imprisoned brother fights for survival in this &ldquo;elegiac tale of tragedy and redemption&rdquo; (Booklist). At first glance, the siblings at the heart of Bread for the Baker&rsquo;s Child couldn&rsquo;t seem more different. Rachel is a devoted nun, while Phillip is a faithless accountant in prison for embezzlement. It soon becomes apparent that the two share a painful past, and though separately confined, their spirits and struggles intersect dramatically. Rachel attempts to both run her order and tend to a beloved Mother General on the brink of death. Meanwhile, Phillip comes to the aid of a vulnerable inmate, precipitating a romantic bond that could prove fatal. Intricately structured and psychologically acute, this is a gripping novel exploring the balance between good and evil. </div>

Bread for the Baker's Child

<div>After her husband&rsquo;s death, a mother moves her family onto a farm and hatches a scheme to win back the land she used to own An unlikely criminal, Andy Durant is robbing gas stations to buy back land once connected to his wife&rsquo;s farm in upstate New York. But when he&rsquo;s shot and killed during a robbery, he leaves his wife, Grady, and their three children to fend for themselves. Moving back to the debt-laden farm, Grady ignites a plan that involves getting in the middle of an adjoining neighbor&rsquo;s marriage. Meanwhile, one by one the whole family is charmed by Royal Provo, a young and charismatic orphan working on the property. When the money Andy Durant stole resurfaces, all find themselves in escalating danger. Under the Dog Star is chillingly good storytelling. </div>

Under the Dog Star

<div>&ldquo;This tender memoir&rdquo; by the Rome Prize&ndash;winning novelist revisits the bohemian era of downtown Manhattan in a tale of love, art, and the AIDs crisis (Publishers Weekly). From the 1950s through the 1970s, downtown Manhattan was a hotbed of creative life where artists and writers were free to explore ideas and push boundaries. As a young man, celebrated author and playwright Joseph Caldwell arrived from Milwaukee to become one of the original pioneers of New York&rsquo;s gay bohemian community. In this charming, brutally candid memoir, Caldwell describes his tenure working at the venerated classical music station WQXR, marching in civil protests and being arrested, his evolution as a writer, and his many accomplished acquaintances. Opening with a tender and intimate moment he shared with photographer William Gale Gedney on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1959, Caldwell charts the course of his quixotic pining for him across three decades. But by the early 1980s, the AIDS epidemic terrorizes New York, and the atmosphere of free love and sex is replaced by unrelenting fear. In a tragic twist of fate, Caldwell is finally reunited with Gedney to care for him as he is ravaged by the disease. &ldquo;[Joseph Caldwell&rsquo;s] intimate portrait of gay life in New York City before Stonewall is an important addition to LGBTQ history.&rdquo; &mdash;Peter Cameron, author of Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You &ldquo;[A] brief yet rich, meditative memoir about a talented Midwestern transplant trying to make his mark on New York City . . . A simultaneously tragic and uplifting story of enduring love.&rdquo; &mdash;Kirkus Reviews</div>

In the Shadow of the Bridge

<div>The Rome Prize&ndash;winning author of In the Shadow of the Bridge&ldquo;evokes a bygone era and an earlier pandemic. . . . An affecting turn in [his] long career&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly). This dark, propulsive novel, the crowning masterwork by ninety-two-year-old Joseph Caldwell, takes place during 1992, when AIDS was still an incurable scourge and death casualties were everyday events. One cold winter night, when the artist Dempsey Coates is on her way home to her loft, she encounters a blaze, several alarms ringing and water jetting every which way from fire hydrants. She ends up offering several firemen a place to get warm. One of them is Johnny Donegan, a passionate lad who falls madly in love with her and is determined, through prayer and sheer perseverance, to make a life with Dempsey unimpeded by the specter of her illness. But when the couple is finally blessed with an unexpected stroke of good luck, this one twist of fate that promises an enduring future will end up coming between them in a very tragic and unforeseen way. Praise for In the Shadow of the Bridge &ldquo;A moving memoir and a look at gay and artistic life in New York City from the 1950s on, through the AIDS epidemic.&rdquo; &mdash;New York Post &ldquo;In telling the story of coming to NYC as a young man, grappling with his desire to be an artist, to be a man of faith, and his desire for the love of another man, Joseph Caldwell tells the story of a time and place&mdash;the story of a generation.&rdquo; &mdash;A. M. Homes, Orange Prize&ndash;winning author of May We Be Forgiven</div>

Joseph Caldwell

Books By Joseph Caldwell (11 Books)