Brendan Kinsella is a young man who just wants to live his life, but he was born and raised in Northern Ireland and the world keeps intruding on his plans.
In this third volume of Brendan's story, Bobby Sands' hunger strike has been underway for a month and there are nonstop protests throughout Northern Ireland ... as well as death at the hands of the IRA, UDA, Constables, and British soldiers. The last thing in the world Brendan wants to do is return there. But his mother is dying and he is told she wants t o see him, so he feels duty-bound to go.Using the passport of a friend, Jeremy Landau, he enters the country as an American Jew doing research for a thesis on methods of crowd control. Which everyone seems to accept. It's been over eight years since he was spirited away, so many think Brendan Kinsella is long dead. But the British being the British, because there was no body or funeral they still want to question him about the bombing.Unfortunately, once he arrives, Brendan finds his mother remains antagonistic toward him ... when she's lucid. Percocet tends to mess with her grasp on reality and sometimes she softly rambles on about the past as if he's not there. It is far too obvious the end is drawing near.Brendan realizes his younger sister, Maeve, is stretched to her limit in caring for their mother while, at the same time, working for peace with Father Jack ... and no other member of their family is available to help her. Their older sister, Mairead, is pregnant with twins so is of little use; their Aunt Mari is now having issues with her own family; younger brother, Rhuari, assists as he can, but his focus is on keeping himself and his pregnant wife as far away from the back and forth with the British Army as possible while Kieran, the youngest, is in gleeful confrontation with them.But worse than all of that? Older brother, Eamonn, who's been in The Maze prison for years, is considering becoming one of the hunger strikers. Something Brendan cannot abide.Then Father Jack lets slip that the girl Brendan loved, Joanna, might not have been killed in the bombing that injured him, and he careens into turmoil. He tries to find a way to verify it without revealing himself ... but before he can do so, Bobby Sands dies and Derry explodes into chaos. Brendan is now faced with an impossible choice -- to abandon his mother as she is dying, or stay the course, knowing he will soon be found out and arrested.
