The Stone Kings

One bronze swan. One fairy hill. And a door that opens only at moonrise.Every Thursday at the Silver Branch, an Irish pub in Columbus, Ohio, the regulars pour their Guinness and argue about the impossible. Declan, a retired history teacher, has a wild theory: when the Tuatha Dé Danann lost Ireland, some of them sailed west with the sea god Manannán, crossed the ocean, and raised the great mounds of Ohio as fairy hills. Shay, an archaeology student, thinks he’s mad. Old Mick by the fire just tells stories.Then a farmer plows up a bronze swan beside a mound, and the cows won’t go near the field.From Saint Brendan’s leather boat to Hy-Brasil, from Tír na nÓg to Mystery Hill and the moon-aligned Octagon of Newark, The Stone Kings is a warm, funny, spooky journey through Irish myth and America’s lost mysteries. Clearly told as myth, it’s a love letter to the old stories, and to the people who keep telling them.