Twenty years later, a tale of 9/11 survivors takes shape

By DAVID BAUDER
AP Media Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — It took Larry Kirwan nearly 20 years to feel he truly nailed a story of how a working-class family dealt with the death of a police officer at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Larry Kirwan, novelist and former leader of the rock band Black 47, says the roots of his story came when his band played in Manhattan the Saturday after the attack. Audience members watched the door to Connolly’s Pub for familiar faces, just to know they were alive, and cheered arrivals. Kirwan, who’s prominent in New York’s Irish-American community, tried telling stories about survivors on an album and in a play. Kirwan feels he finally got it right in the novel “Rockaway Blue.”