THE DEMONS OF DISCORD
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"The man isn't well. He needs to rest and regain his strength." The gun waved at Keenan's chest. He took deep breath and walked into the corner followed by O'Mara. When he removed the collection of rags from his friend, he looked at O'Mara but he wasn't satisfied. "Take the sheet off him as well." Very reluctantly and with painful slowness, he pulled down the dirty sheet from head to toe and exposed a stone-cold, grey-faced and rigid Colmán. O'Mara's glance told him some of what he needed to know. "He's been dead for at least two days! Why, in God's name is he still here?" Young Keenan turned strange. His shoulders drooped and his head tilted to look sideways down and back at O'Mara. Yet his eyes were wide and bright and his voice was strong. "He was my company. Jack left for home weeks ago. I only had Colmán to talk to." That was it for O'Mara. He'd had enough. "Keenan, pull that sheet back up over his head. Now!" Miles Keenan bent down to obey but a second too second too long to only lift the sheet over his friend's feet. A flash of instinctive warning went through O'Mara's brain. He dived sideways to the floor as Keenan turned around with a a revolver in his hand, picked up from the near corpse, firing wildly where he he expected O'Mara to be. As O'Mara dropped to the wooden floor, he fired both barrels of his shotgun into Keenan's belly. The terrific blasts sent him flying backwards, almost bent double, arms and feet splayed out. He crashed into the wall of the cabin and slid to the floor with his chin on his chest and holes in his stomach pumping out blood and pieces of pulsating intestine.
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About the Book
Jamie Vance, a Presbyterian married to a Catholic girl, plays a leading part in Donegal Unionism. His fiercest enemy is Diamuid O’Mara, a hard-bitten IRA fighter. The novel details assassination, murder, bombings, arson, and conspiracies in Ireland and England. Amid this disorder, the strained relationship between Jamie and his wife, Caitlin, and his obsession with an Anglo-Irishwoman is played out. Diarmuid develops a passionate relationship with a young Dublin girl and then a tough fellow IRA activist, Máire. During World War II, the two strands of Unionism and Republicanism clash head-on in a deadly struggle and reach an explosive climax in the Fermanagh Lakelands over a critically important Allied base in the forefront of the war against Nazi control of the Atlantic.
About the Author
Kenneth Dodds studied history at Leicester and Durham Universities and taught in six secondary schools in Northern England and the west of Scotland. Before and after retiring, he taught Spanish to adults. In 2001 he published Western Designs: A History of the British in Central America. He visits Northwest Ireland regularly and writes history articles for the Donegal Annual. The Stranded Tribe, a novel about Donegal and Ireland, 1895–1922, was published in 2012. He lives and walks with his wife in the Yorkshire Dales but travels regularly to Spain and other warm countries.