Redemption Falls - Tapa dura

"A huge achievement, as deep as it is wide, this is a book like no other of these times - a panorama of tragic love set among people devastated by the American Civil War, brilliantly recounted in the multiple tones of their voices, writings and songs, and realised with an empathy both impressive and extraordinarily moving." (Nuala O'Faolain)

"Redemption Falls deals with a crucial period in the history of Ireland and the United States. The story is told with extraordinary ingenuity, the tone a mixture of the playful and the grave, at times fast-moving, smart and very clever, and then full of beautiful writing and heart-breaking sequences. The cadences of the competing voices in the book combine to produce a dazzling narrative." (Colm Toibin)

"Redemption Falls is a gem. It's a glorious book, enormous, virtuoso and brave. Its scope is wide - love, death, war, belonging - and yet its gaze is intimate. At its heart is the story of a woman who wants to return to the only country she has - her family. The language is at turns bawdy, ancient, poetic, grand and funny. One can't dismiss the genius that's involved in being able to tell such necessary stories in a time of war and still be able to beat back all the cliches. The minute I finished the book I wanted to start reading it all over again." (Colum McCann)

"This book took my breath away. If you're interested at all in the American Civil War, Irish participation in same, love, the expansion of the West, you'll delight in this novel. It is panoramic, yet dense and delicious in detail. It is written gloriously, as if Mr O'Connor toiled at some mighty cathedral organ containing the whole of the English language with its Irish and American flavourings. This is a brave book and only a brave heart could have written it." (Frank McCourt)

1865. The American Civil War is ending. Eighteen years after the famine ship Star of the Sea docked at New York, the daughter of two of her passengers sets out from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on a walk across a devastated America. Eliza Duane Mooney is searching for a young boy she has not seen in four years, one of the hundred thousand children drawn into the war. His fate has been mysterious and will prove extraordinary.

It's a walk that will have consequences for many seemingly unconnected survivors: a love-struck cartographer, a haunted Latina poetess, rebel guerrilla Cole McLaurenson, runaway slave Elizabeth Longstreet and the mercurial revolutionary James Con O'Keeffe, who commanded a brigade of Irish immigrants in the Union Army and is now Governor of a western wilderness where nothing is as it seems.

Redemption Falls is a tale of war and forgiveness, of strangers in a strange land, of love put to the ultimate test. Packed with music, balladry, poetry and storytelling, this is a riveting historical novel of urgent contemporary resonance, from the author of the internationally bestselling Star of the Sea.