Excerpt from The Butchers' Blessing by Ruth Gilligan, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Once in place, they closed their eyes and reached out to clasp hands. Úna felt her father's calloused skin, thick and hard like leather. By comparison, hers was still baby-soft. First they gave thanks for their meal and the beautiful bit of meat that sat resting before them. Next they acknowledged the lovely month they had enjoyed the three of them together. Then they prayed for her father's travels tomorrow and the safety of his return; prayed all eight men would make it through another year. They were the usual entreaties, though Úna thought her mam's voice sounded just a bit thinner on them tonight, a hairline crack when she whispered the final word, Amen.

The meal began. Plates passed. Wine poured. Spuds skewered. "Have you finished all your Christmas holiday homework?" and "What about New Year's resolutions? Mine's sit-ups every morning—need to stop the old middle-aged spread!" As ever, her father was the full whack of himself, trying to leave an imprint on the kitchen air, a compensation to ensure his presence would linger—as if, somehow, that would be enough.

Úna forced herself to eat slowly, savouring each salty chew in turn. Because on top of everything else, tonight was the last night before their meat-meals were rationed down to once a week. The freezer out in the shed stashed all the properly slaughtered beef which the Butchers carried back each December for Úna and her mam to eke eke eke eleven months. Úna scraped her knife as she pictured it—the flesh-Famine up ahead; her dad's absence at the table. She knew that missing a person could leave your stomach as hollow as hunger.


Plates licked and rinsed, she headed off to change into pyjamas. Outside the boiler cupboard she checked again, then produced the morsel of meat she had snuck into her pocket. As her Christmas gift this year, Úna had asked for a bit of money, then bought the trap down in the village shop on the sly. According to the label, it was one of the new "humane" varieties that worked mainly on balance—no spring loadings or metal decapitations; no poison or jam-thick layers of glue. Instead, the weight of the mouse tipped it over until a plastic door sliced shut behind—no chance of escape, but no blood to it either.

She cupped her hand now and waved it back and forth to help the steak smell waft into the cupboard. She hoped mice liked their beef rare, same as her. She would check the trap again tomorrow, right after her father had raised his leather hand to the morning sky and broken both of their poor hearts.


She was certain she wouldn't sleep, but she must have dozed a bit because a few hours later she awoke with a start. Was it her prey that had woken her, scuttling out for a midnight snack? She strained her ears. The sound wasn't squeaks, but hushed protests.

"Cúch, what if I can't face another year?" Through the darkness, the crack in her mother's voice had turned into a fissure. "You have no idea just how lonely—"

"Ah, Grá, don't be starting all that." Her father's sigh was so heavy, a draught underneath her bedroom door. His next words were woollier. "Grá, you know the rules. If I don't go then the others can't go and then—"

"What if I don't care about the rules any more?" The fissure became a chasm.

Úna shut her eyes as if that would make it stop.

According to the ancient Irish custom, there had to be eight men present at every cattle slaughter; eight different hands touching the animal's hide as it passed from this life to the next. So now eight Butchers spent eleven months of the year calling on the few families around the country who still believed, and killing their beasts in the traditional, curse-abiding way.

Úna's father had been a Butcher her entire life. In those twelve and a quarter years she had never known her gorgeous mother to complain.

Excerpted from The Butchers' Blessing by Ruth Gilligan. Copyright © 2020 by Ruth Gilligan. Excerpted by permission of Tin House Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.