The Butcher's Boy

About the Book

Paul Brennan was brought up during the war years but taken from Grammar School prematurely to help in his father's butchers shop. Volunteering for Army service at 17 he later landed at Normandy on 'D' Day. Wounded in action, he was eventually discharged. He tried the meat trade once again but due to family friction decided to go to Canada to seek his fortune. Eventually ending up in British Columbia he hires out to the huge Alcan project in Northern British Columbia at Kitimat and Kemano. During a break in Vancouver he meets a beautiful young English girl whom he later marries in Los Angeles. Having both obtained visas to work in the States they spend some time in Los Angeles gaining work experience, sightseeing and sampling life in the big city.

Paul's wife, Juilet, had made a commitment to her parents before leaving home, promising them she would return after 2 years. Reluctantly they returned to the U.K. and took over a pub, introduced food in a big way and the business never looked back. Eventually they acquired another 2 pubs and followed the same policy. Meanwhile, the friction in the Brennan family continued over the years and manifests itself about the time Paul's mother passed away. It turns out that the younger brother and his wife had an absolute greed for money and would lie, cheat and deceive to acquire it. Things start to come to a head a few years later when events started to catch up with them. First the D.H.S.S. and later the Inland Revenue start asking questions leaving no stone unturned.

Paul sells the 3 pubs to large brewery who intends to make them the nucleus of a pub foodchain and retires. The younger brother loses his wife in a car crash and later, finding himself in a hole he can't get out of, does a runner to Spain burning all his bridges behind him.

About the Author

Geoff Heal was brought up during the war years, Grammar School educated, at seventeen he volunteered for Army service towards the end of the war, serving in India and the Middle East as an infantry officer in the 1st and 2nd Kings.

After brief periods in the butchery trade and commercial horticulture, he went to work in North America, mainly on construction. After several years returned to the U.K. for a year before returning to the States and onward to New Zealand. Spent seven years 'down under', again on construction before returning with his new wife to the U.K. Spent the next few years designing and building 'in situ' timber framed houses. When the building trade went into 'suspended animation', started a nursery/market garden which he and his wife ran for thirteen years whilst their four daughters were growing up.

After another spell in the building trade, building and renovating, started a Nursing Home which they both ran for a further thirteen years with the periodic help from their four daughters.

Retired at seventy-five, and still living in Somerset, they have spent the last two years renovating a 12th century farmhouse in S.W. France as a 'maison secondaire' for the use of the family.