Stronger Than Fists : The Belfast Bruises Duet

Rain-slicked Belfast. A family on the brink. A woman who refuses to go down on the mat.

Stronger Than Fists is an emotionally charged Belfast novel about resilience, found family, and the complicated tenderness between love and survival. When Maeve Kelly is pulled back to the city she swore she’d left behind—her mother in hospital, her younger brother sparring grief, a debt collector circling the door—she walks straight into the gym that once felt like church and the man who once stood in her corner.

St. Brigid’s Gym still breathes in leather and prayer. Nolan Price still knows her footwork and her silences. Eoin wants rounds instead of tears. And Belfast—hungry, weary, awake—keeps its own scorecard. To keep her family safe, Maeve must lace up again: make money fast without losing herself, face the man who collects debts with a smile, and decide whether the truth she ran from can be the life she runs toward.

This is not a story about boxing; it’s a story about how we fight. It’s the ring, the kitchen, the ward at midnight; the songs we sing to the people we love; the rule that says no one goes alone. With grit and lyrical warmth,