Mated from the Morgue: A Tale of the Second Empire

Paris in the 1860s glitters above and starves below. Manus O'Hara, a young Irishman newly arrived in the city, sleeps in a garret so tight the walls seem to breathe. He is poor enough to understand hunger as a companion, and when he meets Pat, a ragged stray dog, something shifts. They share what little they have: crusts of bread, the cramped warmth of a rented corner, the unspoken recognition of two creatures the city has nearly swallowed whole. O'Shea writes with sharp, unsentimental tenderness about the daily mathematics of survival, where a meal split with a dog becomes an act of profound grace. When O'Hara's wanderings lead him to the Morgue, that chilling repository where Paris displays its unclaimed dead, a strange encounter awaits that will reshape his fate. This is poverty without romance, friendship without sentimentality, and a city that devours and occasionally redeems.