Did You Pay the Piper Man? by Hanna Nielson (Nov 2025)
On a winter's night in Celtic Tiger era Belfast, an ex-boxer, an American writer, and busy hotel manager search for redemption as timelines split apart - and only the tune of a homeless piper man can heal the rift. (Literary Magic Realism)
Belfast 2005. On a busy night before Christmas, the struggles of a former boxer, a young American writer, and a beleaguered hotel manager intertwine when timelines split. Each searches for redemption as their fates unravel, and the difference between choice or chance is the flip of a coin. Weaving through it all is a homeless piper man whose haunting melody holds the key to healing the rift, if only someone will listen.
Brian Legarty, an ex-boxer still suffering the effects of a head injury that ended his career, is at his wits end tending bar alone for a surging crowd that won’t stop. When he crosses the road to a luxury hotel to ask for help, a misunderstanding between mates turns violent – but in another timeline, he mets the beautiful American writer, and their star-crossed love story begins.
It's one of several stories that alternate between alienation and connection during this one-night Odyssey through Belfast, across time, into the Celtic underworld and back again.
A richly textured and psychologically observant tapestry of multiple storylines, Did You Pay the Piper Man? is set during an age of heady excess and uneasy changes in post-Troubles Belfast. But it is, above all, a celebration of friendship in all its forms that can redeem us across the any divide, even death.
(Published November, 2025) Available now on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0G3WVH214