Of a Tree Called Life

Few are aware of the role poor Irish immigrants played in the construction of the New Basin Canal through some of the more treacherous swamp land in North America, nor of the price they paid in doing so. Deaths caused by yellow fever, malaria, dysentery, poisonous snakes and alligators were so prevalent that the use of slave labor was quickly determined to be too costly to be practical. The solution, therefore, was to send to Ireland for impoverished Irishmen willing to risk their lives toiling in such hostile conditions for meager wages. They came by the shiploads to die in great numbers.



Edifying, yet gut wrenching and heartbreaking, what Pumphrey has written is a book of fiction based on an historical fact-nothing less than an accounting of a little known American holocaust. The stories of the Irishmen who dug the canal have been all but lost to history, the only acknowledgment of their existence being a small monument at the foot of West End Boulevard overlooking Lake Pontchartrain.