Working on it...

This image is going to be on the back of the jacket.

I adjusted the synopsis for the dust jacket while en route to Chicago. Longer...more detailed...but better? Seems a bit loose.

Derry, April 1981

The hunger strike has been underway for a month and Northern Ireland is in turmoil. Demonstrations. Protests. Rioting. And more death at the hands of the IRA, Constables and British soldiers. The last thing in the world Brendan wants to do is return there. But he is told his mother is dying and she wants to see him, so he feels duty-bound to go.

Using the passport of his friend, Jeremy Landau, he slips into the country pretending to be an American Jew researching a paper for his thesis, and everyone appears to accept that. After all, it’s been eight years since he was spirited off, and many think the lad known as Brendan Kinsella is long dead...though that doesn't keep the British from still wanting to question him about the bombing that nearly killed him.

He quickly finds out his mother did not ask for him. In fact, she remains coldly antagonistic to him...while lucid. Under the effects of Percocet, she sometimes rambles about the past and fails to recognize him as her son. It is now very obvious the end is near, for her.

Brendan figures he was tricked into coming home because it is Maeve, his younger sister, who needs him. She is stretched to her limit, caring for Ma and working for peace, with Father Jack. His older sister, Mairead, is pregnant with twins so cannot help. His Aunt Mari is having issues with her own family. His younger brother, Rhuari, has been helping some, but is more focused on keeping himself and his wife as much out of the back and forth with the Constables and Army as possible. And his youngest brother, Kieran, is in gleeful confrontation with them.

But what is worse? His older brother, Eamonn, is in prison and being pushed to add his name to the list of hunger strikers. Something Brendan cannot abide.

Since his mother’s death is near, Brendan stays to help Maeve while keeping as low a profile as possible. But his mother’s ramblings raise questions about his father’s past and why the man was murdered. And he is sent careening into turmoil when Father Jack lets slip that Joanna might not have been killed in the bombing that injured Brendan. He tries to find a way to verify it without revealing himself but is blocked at every turn.

Until Bobby Sands dies and Derry explodes into full-scale rioting and death, trapping Brendan in the chaos as the British Army’s search for him closes in.