What would it
take for two farm boys to abandon their simple life and their family and put
themselves in harm’s way in an army of rebellion? This is a coming of age tale of growing up in 17th
century Ireland. The horrors of the rebellion hit home with the return of two
uncles, both wounded in a battle in Ulster. The brothers are swept up in the action
when they are secretly involved in stealing arms from a Scottish outpost in
Sligo. Though their involvement is not
exposed, a family friend is murdered for his part in the raid.
The boys say nothing at home, but choose to
leave rather than give the family guilty knowledge of their crimes. They intend to join the Irish rebels to
avenge their friend and their uncles fighting against the royalists, but the
confusing political and religious loyalties of the times find them working as
draymen in the confederation army, under the leadership of royalist officers
fighting for the King against Cromwell’s ‘New Model Army’.
In
the siege of Drogheda there were few survivors.
Those that did survive were sent to Barbados as slaves. In Barbados the Irish interact with black
Africans bought in Brazil and Choctaws enslaved by the Spanish and sold to the English
planters. The war between English
Royalists and Parliamentarians finds its way to Barbados, and forces some planters
to leave the island with some of their slaves. Their escape leads to the American colonies
where the Irish go into the forests of Alabama with the Choctaws and are
assimilated into the Woodland Indian culture only to discover that the Choctaw are on the same path to destruction that Ireland experienced.
So there it is, with all the trappings of a literary historical work of fiction Fictional characters interacting with real people who existed in the period and sharing experiences that really happened. (Or so it is said in some history books)
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