John O’Donoghue was born in 1900. In his early years he lived, a barefoot peasant boy, in a two-room cottage in County Kerry, helping his father on their small farm. In 1943 he went to England where he worked on an aerodrome, shoveling gravel into a concrete mixer. After a period when he was engaged on re-laying railway lines, John turned to house painting as his next job.

His first book, IN A QUIET LAND, was published in 1957,and took him more than twenty years to write. In 1958 his second book, IN A STRANGE LAND, was published and IN KERRY LONG AGO, his third and last book was published in 1960. John contributed articles to The Irish Times, The Bell, and other Irish papers, and was working on his fourth book when he died.