Longlines

JJ Hynes is forty-two, a veteran of the Troubles in Derry and Belfast. He has sacrificed his life, marriage, family to the Cause. Now he’s on the run. Traumatised, bewildered, JJ finds refuge in Holland with a survivor of the Dutch Resistance who is still haunted, like himself, by past memories of war.

Within a year, JJ is called back, tasked with persuading comrades in the West of Ireland to support the ‘road to peace’, a process he wants to believe in. In the village of Killoveragh, he encounters Ashling, a might-have-been sweetheart from his time in Dublin, and her sister Nora.

Can JJ, himself wavering, persuade the hardliners to support the process leading to peace and a political settlement? Can there be peace, happiness and even love for somebody like him?

History, politics, and possible redemption come together in a narrative that reads like a thriller but asks serious and important questions about the interweaving of personal and national trauma.