'Whale Harbor' by Mary Beth Keane is November's 'GMA' Book Club pick
"Whale Harbor" by Mary Beth Keane is the "Good Morning America" Book Club pick for November.
Keane is the New York Times bestselling author of five novels, including "Ask Again, Yes." Her latest novel, "Whale Harbor," is a multigenerational family saga inspired by her own family history.
Set in Ireland in the 1960s, the novel follows 11 brothers whose lives take different paths after a family tragedy.
Spanning decades and continents, "Whale Harbor" explores family bonds, loss and the lasting impact of choices made across generations.
Read an excerpt below and buy a copy of the book here. Interested in more books? Shop all of the "GMA" Book Club picks here.
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This month, we are also teaming up with Little Free Library to give out free copies in Times Square and at 150 locations across the U.S. and Canada. Since 2009, more than 300 million books have been shared in Little Free Libraries across the world. Click here to find a copy of "Whale Harbor" at a Little Free Library location near you.
Excerpt from "Whale Harbor" by Mary Beth Keane
"Macdara," came a whisper, hot breath near Mac's ear. "Dúisigh!"
It was morning. A bell in the distance. Mac's body felt stiff, and he could tell by the light that it was later than he usually slept. Rian’s spot under the blanket was cold so he must have been up for a while. Prowling, no doubt. Exploring. Blackguarding, if such a thing was possible on the top of a mountain.
If anyone could find trouble, Rian could. Down at the shore the tide would have pushed great knots of seaweed onto the beach and Mac and Rian's brothers would have been sent to collect it. It was mid-May already. Fair Day was coming up soon and if Mac could figure a way there he’d have a great time, but his bicycle had been broken for weeks.
"Say it in English," Mac mumbled to his younger brother. He didn't want to move just yet -- he needed a moment -- but in those seconds he could feel the heat of Rian's breath near his face again.
"Dúisigh," Rian repeated as he shook his brother's shoulder. It was just the two of them up in the booley house where their mother had slept during summers when she was a girl, back when cattle were driven into the mountains for the seasonal burst of grass.
fie booley had been neglected for a generation because no one kept more than a few head of cattle anymore, at least not in the Cuan where they were locked between mountains and sea and the only crop that appeared from the soil in abundance were stones.
But as a young girl, their mother had stayed up in the booley for a few weeks each summer along with her mother, and her aunts, and all the other womenfolk in other booleys scattered over the mountains because the men couldn't leave the sea. fie small shelter had a packed dirt floor and a ring of stones marking the place to make a fire.
fie walls were just stands of carefully stacked bog oak built against one of the boulders that made up the landscape of wider Connemara and that Teacher said were all put there by a glacier, somehow. Outside, a battered ash tree gave some protection from the wind.
Rian gave up on Mac and stepped outside. Mac could hear him scrambling in the brush.
"Tar anseo! " he called eventually. "English!" Mac called back.
RIAN WAS A TERRIBLE STUDENT, and English was his worst subject. It was puzzling to their mother because Rian was bright and tended to understand things quite quickly once they were explained to him. It was only that he couldn't sit still.
Last month, after a message sent home went unanswered (because Rian had crumpled the note and tossed it into the sea), Teacher walked all the way through the small village of Cuan an Mhíl Mhóir -- everyone called it "the Cuan" -- and up the narrow lane to let Cathal and Mary Joyce know that of the several Joyces he’d taught in his ten years as schoolteacher, this one was the worst. Rian talked nonstop, distracting the other children. He fought. He bragged. He was an all-around contrary child. fie latest offense was that he refused to speak English when Teacher asked him to, and now the other children were copying him.
Teacher stood by their fire while Rian and several of his brothers hid in the back room, mimicking the posh way Teacher had one foot turned out and one hand on his hip. fiey wondered if that’s how everyone who grew up in the city stood.
With Rian leading them, they lifted their noses and repeated to one another every word Teacher said, except in whispers. Rian's mother excused herself for a moment and chased the boys out the back door with the end of her broom.
Teacher reminded Cathal and Mary of what everyone in the village already knew, which was that if any local child wanted to get work one day he'd have to leave the area, and for that he'd have to know English.
At age nine Rian should be in at least second class, if not third, but he was still in senior infants. And he wasn’t even ashamed!
"I don't know much English myself," Mary said.
"Why would you?" Cathal said, his tone telling her that if that was an apology there was no need.
"In school he has to at least try," Teacher said. "I'm not saying he shouldn't hold on to his own language. I'm only saying he needs to know English as well."
Cathal crossed his arms and frowned, but Mary promised she’d sort him. She'd put his brother Macdara on the case.
"Now there's a student," Teacher said. "I'd have Macdara in school still, if it were up to me. I'd have him—."
"Ach," Cathal said, waving the words away. He searched his pocket for his pipe.
"Now be telling us about your own little ones," Mary said as she handed him a generous glass of store whiskey. To Cathal she handed a much smaller glass, and when he looked up at her with a complaint in his eyes she looked right back.
She asked after Teacher's new baby, his wife. Now that his official business was over with, he settled in and gave her all the news.
"And you, Mary?" he asked, somewhat awkwardly. "You're feeling well? Do you think you'll get a girl this time?"
Mary laughed. "Another boy. I know it."
"Eleven sons," Teacher said. "And King David couldn't even get one. Do you ever wonder that God hasn't given you a girl?"
"Oh, believe me," she said. "I'll raise the question when I meet him."
But it was true what Teacher said about Rian needing English, needing to at least try, so after he left, Mary kept her eye on the road to catch Mac before he came inside. When she saw him approaching from the direction of the village she pulled on her shawl and walked out to meet him.
He was lost in his thoughts, she could see. But he was still boyish enough to blush when he was happy and when he saw her -- unexpected at that time of day that she wouldn't be standing at the stove -- his cheeks flushed. She fell into step beside him and noted how tall he was now, how she needed a step and a half to match each of his.
"Are you missing your brother very much, Macdara?" she asked, surprising herself. It wasn't what she'd intended to talk to him about, but it struck her as she saw him walking alone that a year earlier he would have been walking with Sean. fie pair of them went everywhere together, but now Sean was in England, working. Mac, who was second eldest, would be next to go.
"I do miss him I suppose," he said. "Don't tell him." "Never."
She described the teacher's visit and asked him to practice English with Rian. "Lead him to it bit by bit," she said. Of all his brothers, Rian admired Mac most. If there was anyone who could talk this stubborn child into learning, it was him.
"It's only that he feels afraid," she said. "Afraid of what?" Mac asked.
"Of the feeling it gives him, learning English, knowing that the reason he has to learn is because he'll leave one day."
"Did he say that?"
"No," Mary said. "But that's what it is." Once again Mac marveled that his mother had a deep understanding of every possible feeling, even when the person himself might not know he was feeling it.
NOW, STANDING OUTSIDE THE BOOLEY house, Rian tilted his head back, cupped his hand around his mouth, and shouted "DÚISIGH!" as loud as he could. His voice echoed across the valley and rolled toward the sea.
"Did you hear that, Mac?" Rian asked, delighted. He shouted again, and again his voice echoed. "Do you think they heard that all the way at the schoolhouse?"
"Paul Evans is an ugly gowl!" Rian shouted before Mac could answer, and the words rolled down the mountain. Paul Evans was Teacher's name. "Paul Evans wears his mammy's knickers!"
Mac couldn't help it, he laughed. Rian must have heard because he poked his head in and asked, "Are you up at last? Come see something."
THERE WAS A STORY THEIR mother often told: Once, when the women were up on the mountain, an old hag appeared at the door.
She was looking for food and shelter from the rain. It was strange that an old woman who was unknown to any of them should happen to be passing so far up the mountain, and they only had enough for themselves, but they gave her the best spot by the fire to dry off and something to keep her going on her journey.
fiey were worried about her, being a great age and the mountain a rough place, but as soon as she ate and rested, she transformed into a hare and ran away.
"Is that true?" Mac asked very seriously the first time Mary told him the story. "Did you see her turn into a hare?" He was small at the time, alone at the killing stump with her as she held the tail of a cadóg in her left hand and with her right ran her knife down its back to remove the scales.
It was a rare thing to be alone with his mother and that may be why for his whole life he remembered it. fiere was no doubt a baby in the cradle or in her belly or both but he couldn't remember which one.
It happened before she was born, Mary admitted, but it was always talked about, and everyone knew that what might not seem possible in the village was certainly possible on the mountain.
She wouldn't dare doubt it and she warned Mac that he shouldn't, either -- only the most arrogant sort of person presumes to know the secrets nature holds. What would have become of them, she often wondered, had the women not given the crone a bit of bread, had they not given her a place by the fire. Mac shivered and wondered the same.
Mac and Rian were up the mountain this morning because Rian had gotten into a fight with a classmate, who, like Rian, was nine years old, and also from a family of brothers -- except the Sullivans were all boxers.
Mac asked what they fought over, but Rian wouldn't say. Rian once fought over a spoon. Over whether it was raining outside or only spitting. Over whether a mule was smarter than a donkey.
Someone once found a broken chain on the road, good for absolutely nothing, but Rian bloodied another boy’s nose to have it. fiis particular fight, Mac learned eventually, was about skimming stones.
A group of them had been hanging around by the water when skimming stones turned into a contest and Rian claimed he got twelve hops.
One of the Sullivan boys said it was only nine. fiey agreed to each have another go, the boy with the most hops would be the winner, and Rian lost.
fien it turned into a fistfight, like all contests did, and Rian lost that, too, as anyone who took in the sizes of the two boys would have predicted.
But at the moment of peak humiliation, with every student looking on, Rian said at least he had the courage to spend a night up the mountain by himself. It was rumored that this Sullivan boy still slept at the foot of his mammy's bed.
"Why?" Macdara asked. "Of all things." "Because," Rian said.
"Because why?"
"Because!" Rian said, growing red in the face with frustration. "Because I don't have to be bigger than him to sleep up in the booley. I only have to be braver."
Macdara had spent the day on the island helping his grandfather repair a collapsed well -- the kind of careful, peaceful work he liked -- and when the tide was finally low enough for him to walk across the rocks to the mainland and then home, he recognized Rian's crouched form in the distance, waiting for him.
He saw the bruise blooming on the side of his brother’s head, and knew he was about to be pestered for something. Rian begged Macdara to come with him up the mountain overnight, and to not tell a living soul.
"Barry will go," Mac said once he'd heard it all. fiere were plenty of other brothers to choose from. Barry was fourteen. Macdara was gone sixteen, so this seemed below him. "Or Fearghal. Or both of them." Fearghal was a year younger than Barry.
"fiey said they won't."
"fiomas then. fiere'll be the pair of you in it." fiomas was only six but seemed older because he was so serious. He had flame-red hair, redder than anyone else's in the family, the reddest their mother claimed she’d ever seen, and people called him fiomas the Red.
In the old days, their mother told them, people thought it was bad luck to see a redhead first thing in the morning, and if fiomas had lived in those days they’d be turning their backs to him as he walked to school.
"He said he'd be too scared," Rian said to Mac. "fiere’s síóga up there and everyone knows it."
Mac looked down at his brother. Vivid yellow furze lined the road on both sides, making a bright, beautiful tunnel leading home.
"You didn't ask them. None of them."
"fiey’ll tell everyone they were up there! I’m supposed to be going alone to prove I’m not scared."
"But you are scared. You go looking for trouble, I swear." "I lost the fight! What could I do?"
Mac looked up at the fog-shrouded mountain and shivered. He wished Sean was still home. He wished he could ask his friend Martin to come along, but Martin was gone too.
Mac thought they had a whole year more to discuss plans, but Martin’s brother PJ had come home from America for a visit, and next thing Martin was packed off to Montana with him when he left.
Lees lived up the road from the Joyces and no one from either family ever passed by the other’s house without stopping in with news.
"Macdara," Rian's small face twisted with distress. "Please."
***
Excerpted from "WHALE HARBOR" by Mary Beth Keane. Copyright © 2026 by Mary Beth Keane. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.
Copyright © 2026 by Mary Beth Keane. Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio read by Moe Dunford, from the audiobook "Whale Harbor" by Mary Beth Keane, published by Simon & Schuster Audio, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Used with permission from Simon & Schuster, LLC.
