For Northern Irish author Eoghan Walls, great writing can start in the most ordinary of places.
“I think that is where literature really happens, in our kitchens, in our bedrooms, in the spaces where we take off our masks and our uniforms,” Walls said.
In his latest novel, “Field Notes From an Extinction,” Walls explores fatherhood, privilege, and the reckoning of a people amid starvation. Walls will make his book tour debut in the United States at the end of the month, ending his tour March 27 at Belmont Books at 79 Leonard St.
The novel follows English scientist Ignatius Green in 1847 on the remote island of Tor Mór just off the northern Irish coast. Described as “single-minded and self-righteous, brilliant and bumbling,” Green was dispatched to the island to study the great auk — a species of penguin-like aquatic birds that became extinct during the mid-19th century.
However, his scientific endeavors are interrupted when a young child arrives among his monthly shipment of provisions. As Ireland is ravaged by famine, the child is described as “utterly feral and unmanageable.”
Told through Green’s notebooks, the story follows the unlikely duo as they confront survival and learn the bounds of love and family.
“It’s an examination of what it means to be a scholar or to be a great man. What is the cost of the great man? Who are these great men? What happens if they suddenly have to take responsibility in a domestic sphere? Does that change?” Walls said.
Walls, a father of several daughters himself, said the novel was inspired by the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric and right-wing ideologies in Europe, and the realities of fatherhood and family. Walls said he felt compelled to write a narrative that encapsulated the complexities and nuances of history and oppression in Ireland for a modern audience.
“We have always been and always imagined ourselves to be a nation of immigrants, where everyone is an immigrant, or knows an immigrant, or sends love letters to an immigrant. That has been part of our psyche since the famine, if not ages before,” he said.
The Irish Famine, sometimes referred to as the Great Hunger, lasted from 1845 to 1852 and led to the greatest loss of life in western Europe in the 100 years between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I, according to the Irish Memorial.
The famine was primarily caused by several years of failed potato crops due to a fungus — over half of Ireland’s population depended on potatoes as their primary source of nutrition, according to historian Stephanie Honchell Smith. However, as the famine ravaged the country, Ireland was still expected to export crops such as wheat and barley, primarily to England, according to Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum.
About 1 million people died, and millions more emigrated to the U.S., Australia, and beyond.
In his research, Walls said he was struck by the timing of scientific discoveries across the globe that coincided with the famine.
“[Darwin’s] seminal works in evolution were being written at the same time as millions of people just across the sea from him were dying and being let die by the state,” he said.
But for Walls, his writing comes from his enduring love for his wife and children — even joking that he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to write when his daughters grow up and move out. From the unlikely relationship between Green and the child to the Great Auks themselves, “Field Notes From an Extinction” is a love letter to love itself.
Walls added he hopes audiences throughout his book tour will take to heart the question of what it means to be a parent, and how language around immigration can be a powerful stain on history.
“We should not forget empathy with immigrants from wherever they’re coming from,” Walls said.
“Field Notes From an Extinction” is on sale at Belmont Books now. Walls will speak at Belmont Books on March 27 at 7 p.m. More information can be found at https://belmontbooks.com/event/2026-03-27/eoghan-walls-and-maria-pinto-discuss-field-notes-extinction