Welcome to Dun & Dunn, the podcast All Things Dominic Dunn. I'm Alicia, your host, and in this first

episode, we are going to cover the author in his first act. Dominic Dunn has a whole life, five and a half

decades of a life, before he becomes a prolific writer of fiction and true crime. How does Dominic get to that second born October 29, 1925.

Dominic is the second of six children in a well-to-do Irish Catholic family that will live in a big gray stone house in the best part of

town within the hamlet of Hartford, Connecticut. Even from the age of four, Dominic knows Hartford

is not his scene, and he grows up never quite feeling like he belongs. Dominic's dad, Richard Edwin Dunn, is a big-time heart surgeon.

It's president of a hospital. Dad is pioneering heart surgery innovations decades before heart

transplants actually become a thing. Dad's kind of a big deal. And does very well by marrying Dorothy Francis Burns. Dorothy is from a very

wealthy Irish Catholic family. Dominic will describe her, at least in Irish Catholic circles, as being

considered a bit of an heiress. Irish Catholic girl, early 20th century, how does she get to be considered a bit of an

heiress? Dorothy's father, Dominic Burns, was a potato famine immigrant who comes to the United States

when he's 14 years old and makes good, experiences the American dream. Grandpa, Dominic, begins in the grocery store business as a teenager

and ends up transforming much like his grandson with a whole new career. Grandpa Dominic will

become a bank president of the Park Street Trust Company. Dominic says that when they were kids, they stressed the bank

president part of Grandpa's life rather than the grocery store business part of Grandpa's life.

But Grandpa Dominic is legendary. He's made a knight of St. Gregory by Pope Pius the 12th for his

philanthropic work for the poor of Hartford,

a public school in a section of the city known as Frog Hollow, which is the old Irish section

of town, is named for him as well. Grandad becomes really important to both Dominic's younger

brother John Gregory growing up.

All the done kids call him Papa, and Dominic will describe Papa as an extraordinary man.

Even though he didn't have any formal schooling past the age of 14, Papa is never without a book.

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