The Heather Blazing
Colm Tóibín
 The novel tells the story of Eamon Redmond, a judge in the Irish High Court of the late twentieth century Ireland. It reconstructs his relationships with his wife and children through his life and the memories of a childhood marked by the death of his father. The County Wexford landscape and the death of the father are the narrative material, which Colm Tóibín would revisit again in the The Blackwater Lightship. The novel takes its title from a line from the song Boolavogue, specifically "a rebel hand set the heather blazing." The novel also plots the development of Fianna Fáil from the austere republicanism and style of Éamon de Valera to the nepotism of the Charles Haughey era. It has been said that this novel made Tóibín the heir of John McGahern. Amongst Women a book by McGahern has similar atmosphere to this book.