The reigning master of grand historical fiction returns with the
stirring conclusion to his bestselling Dublin Saga.
The Princes of Ireland, the first volume of Edward Rutherfurd's
magisterial epic of Irish history, ended with the disastrous Irish
revolt of 1534 and the disappearance of the sacred Staff of Saint
Patrick. The Rebels of Ireland opens with an Ireland transformed;
plantation, the final step in the centuries-long English conquest of
Ireland, is the order of the day, and the subjugation of the native
Irish Catholic population has begun in earnest.
Edward Rutherfurd brings history to life through the tales of families
whose fates rise and fall in each generation: Brothers who must choose
between fidelity to their ancient faith or the security of their
families; a wife whose passion for a charismatic Irish chieftain
threatens her comfortable marriage to a prosperous merchant; a young
scholar whose secret rebel sympathies are put to the test; men who risk
their lives and their children's fortunes in the tragic pursuit of
freedom, and those determined to root them out forever. Rutherfurd spins
the saga of Ireland's 400-year path to independence in all its drama,
tragedy, and glory through the stories of people from all strata of
society--Protestant and Catholic, rich and poor, conniving and heroic.
His richly detailed narrative brings to life watershed moments and
events, from the time of plantation settlements to the "Flight of the
Earls," when the native aristocracy fled the island, to Cromwell's
suppression of the population and the imposition of the harsh
anti-Catholic penal laws. He describes the hardships of ordinary people
and the romantic, doomed attempt to overthrow the Protestant oppressors,
which ended in defeat at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, and the
departure of the "Wild Geese." In vivid tones Rutherfurd re-creates
Grattan's Parliament, Wolfe Tone's attempted French invasion of 1798,
the tragic rising of Robert Emmet, the Catholic campaign of Daniel
O'Connell, the catastrophic famine, the mass migration to America, and
the glorious Irish Renaissance of Yeats and Joyce. And through the eyes
of his characters, he captures the rise of Charles Stewart Parnell and
the great Irish nationalists and the birth of an Ireland free of all
ties to England.
A tale of fierce battles, hot-blooded romances, and family and political
intrigues, The Rebels of Ireland brings the story begun in The
Princes of Ireland to a stunning conclusion.
