Novelist Niamh Boyce focuses on the passion and anger of 1930s Athy

The title character in Niamh Boyce’s novel The Herbalist causes upheaval when he sets up his stall in the square of a sleepy Irish market town in the 1930s.

The town is unnamed, but Boyce, who will appear at this year’s Dublin Book Festival, says she used her hometown of Athy, Co Kildare, as a model, particularly for the riverside scenes.

The herbalist’s potions and tonics draw a crowd. The men curse his “dark crafts and foreign notions”, but the women are enthralled by his exotic, Indian ways. They call him “the black doctor”. There’s a procession to his door; he is a back-street abortionist, based loosely on a local historical figure.