She Loved Me Once and Other Stories

The Ancient Order of Hibernians, Division 9, located on Pittsburgh's Oakland Avenue, was officially an Irish club, but in fact, just about everyone in the neighborhood could join--and did. Though the club closed down for good in 1965, its memory lives on in the fiction of Lester Goran, a former member of the Irish Club and a consummate storyteller. Goran insists that everything he knows about writing, he learned from listening to club habitués; whether or not this is true, Goran honors his roots with a collection of stories entitled She Loved Me Once.

Set during the 1940s and '50s, the stories in She Loved Me Once are populated mostly by sad-sack characters whose lives have known more failure than success, whose own stories are sandbags against a flood of despair, and who can always be counted on to stand a stranger a drink and hear his sad tale in turn. Though many of these stories are connected to the Irish Club and its members, each stands alone. Some of the best are narrated by Goran's alter-ego, Clifton Clowers, a Jewish patron of the club. She Loved Me Once is old-fashioned storytelling at its best: strong on plot and character, embued with the ambience of a time gone by.