The Bump on Brannigan's Head

The Bump on Brannigan’s Head, published twenty-two years after Connolly’s best-selling Mr. Blue, tells of the transformation of Whittiersville. Equally amusing and moving, The Bump showcases Connolly’s distinctive sense of humor, and his awareness of both the tremendous strengths and the tragic shortcomings of human nature. The brash, boisterous Tom Brannigan is anything but a likely candidate for sainthood. But a bump on the head from his garage door brings Brannigan to an encounter with one of the key challenges of the Gospel: love your enemies. Brannigan finds that he must approach ordinary interactions with a new heart—treating his noisy neighbors with kindness, forgiving those who hurt him, and preaching the Gospel to his fellow townspeople. Stephen Mirarchi, as he did with Connolly’s Mr. Blue and Dan England and the Noonday Devil, adeptly explains the novel’s literary structure, discusses its critical reception, and describes its place in the canon of great literature.