Shaun Ivory

Ireland 1943: although officially neutral no country can remain totally immune from world events.Some of its finest young are fighting and dying in far-flung places. But back home 13-year-old Brendan Lavelle has his own war to fight. His father, John Lavelle, is one of the town's two doctors, respected and revered as a holder of the Victoria Cross medal, won at Gallipoli in 1915.One late spring morning Brendan, while out visiting with him, uncovers a seemingly trivial secret about his father that sets him on a perilous quest for the truth - a search that takes him back to another war, one that could threaten his entire family's future.Is his father part of a terrible conspiracy that involves betrayal, murder and a hunt for stolen gold?Why are his father's former comrades-in-arms no longer what they seemed... and why are they so suddenly interested in what Brendan knows? With his infuriating but streetwise sidekick, Maura, they are all that stands between the destruction of everything Brendan holds dear... and a truth that may prove more costly than he is prepared to pay.In the rumour-soaked atmosphere of Ireland's 'Emergency' - with its spies from the skies, floating German mines and the hated 'glimmer man' - five crucial days is compellingly evoked here in a tale of one boy who must grow up fast - or die

This book 2 is the continuing story of Conor O'Farrell's life and passage through the Old West. Having survived two of the Civil War's most savage battles, been wounded and awarded America's highest military medal he barely escapes false imprisonment and death, working in Washington's former military hospital for the insane under an assumed name. This new chapter in his life begins where Book 1 ends: he becomes a cowboy, with the Pinkertons still after him for something he didn't do. He learns the basic skills of riding herd for hundreds of miles with the Double G outfit, making new friends and enemies along the way. He manages to survive a different kind of war with Nature, whose rules seem to change from day to day. His wartime injuries still plague him, both mentally and physically. He masters skills he never knew he had and finds love in the strangest of places. This section covers the next few years of Conor's life and as with Book 1 he emerges a different man, still a fugitive from the law but now on his own trail of vengeance. Book 3 is in production, out in 2016.

None of us get to choose the circumstances of our birth. Conor O'Farrell was born in mid-Atlantic, on a coffin ship, his parents fleeing the Irish potato famine. In that sense he was lucky, where millions were not. His father taught him to be proud of his new American roots. When the Civil War started his father said it was his duty to volunteer; the family owed their new country. Conor was 16, swept along on the tide of history like so many others, in a nation struggling to find its identity. In his determination to survive he did things few men could boast about. But survival was paramount; nobility had to catch up. This epic of one such life takes in the sweep of a crucial and colourful period in the American West, meeting historical characters along the way. What he lived through made him what he was - patriot, soldier, gunfighter, buffalo hunter, outlaw, lover, movie star - but always... a fugitive.