Requital (Paperback)

In 1785, Paddy O'Doule, a simple Irish farmer is a press-ganged into the royal navy and later convicted of a crime he did not commit and transported to a penal colony in Australia. After years of suffering and harsh, unjust treatment, peace-loving Paddy, consumed with hatred of the English and the hell-bent on murder and revenge, turns to violence. In Belfast, 1992, Mitch O'Doule, Paddy's great-great-great-grandson, is turning his back on violence. A colonel in the Irish Republican Army, he is disenchanted with 'the cause' and is sickened by the ruthless decision to bomb mainland cities and towns and by the indiscriminate murder of innocent civilians. He devises a plan to double-cross the IRA and disappear to a peaceful new life in Australia. As Mitch plays out his dangerous game, he finds himself following the same route as his ancestor two centuries before. Their fates seem to intermingle as both are overtaken by events and their lives dramatically changed. Exciting and engrossing, "Requital" is a powerful story by a master storyteller. He skillfully weaves together the stories of the two Irishmen living two hundred years apart and, at the same time, provides an insight into the background to Ireland's present troubled history and how the struggle against the English oppressors is passed on from generation to generation.