More than halfway...

...And still making changes to streamline the read. And cut out some proselytizing by Brendan. I have to keep in mind that through this half of the book, he's no older than 18. Sometimes I let observations slip in that are perhaps too adult and aware for him. He's not a fool, even though his mother thinks he is, but he doesn't yet have the knowledge needed to make some of his comments.

That said, he is more mature than most 18 year-olds (as opposed to his cousin, Scott) because he's lived in what was, effectively, a war zone occupied by the British Army. He's experienced brutality and seen horrific deaths. And he's smart enough to know the occupiers will be allowed to do anything they want without legal repercussion.

Like with Bloody Sunday--he figured out something the Widgery Report didn't address. The paratroopers who stormed the anti-internment demonstration on January 30, 1972 came with live ammunition in their rifles. Their intent was to kill people, which they did. 14 men and boys. And the only reason Bren wasn't number 15 was sheer luck.

Seeing death like that and knowing how the killers will walk away, scot-free, colors your view of the world. That's when he started the process of getting the hell away. Which led to him nearly being killed in a bombing and hidden at his aunt's home in Houston under another name, as he recuperates.

Then in the summer of 1973, a new friend of his, Jeremy Landau, is off to work on a kibbutz for a year, and winds up in the IDF during the Yom Kippur war. When he finally returns home, the following summer, he's lost and caught in the horror of it, and he figures out Brendan is the only other person he knows who's seen death like that. The only one who'd understand, and who he can talk to.

They become more like brothers than the lads who share their blood.