He Stands Alone

Randy Lee Eickhoff, the award-winning translator of the epic Ulster Cycle, continues his retelling of Ireland's spellbinding history and folklore in He Stands Alone. For the very first time, Randy Lee Eickhoff has combined several translations of the tale of the Irish Achilles, Cuchulainn, to provide a new and searching look at the warrior whose dedication to his country became the inspiration for Irish rebels in 1916, providing them with a rallying cry heard throughout all of Ireland.

Beginning with Cuchulainn's mysterious birth, Eickhoff skillfully weaves the tale of the magical warrior; from his training with Scathach, the dreaded woman warrior, to his first encounter with the war-goddess, Morigan, a story that foreshadows Cuchulainn's heroic action the Cattle Raid of Cooley.

Cuchulainn's adventures unfold as he grows in battle to become the king's champion, but, all the while, he struggles with his mortal side, and with human failings that inevitably draw him away from his wife, Emer, and under the spell of the mystical Fand, wife of the Irish sea-god, Manannan Mac Lir.

In a style that is often compared to Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney's, Randy Lee Eickhoff demonstrates his knowledge and storytelling ability and once again introduces readers to a truly fascinating aspect of Irish mythology with He Stands Alone.

Randy Lee Eickhoff holds several graduate degrees, including a Ph.D. in Classics. He lives in El Paso, Texas where he works on translations in several languages, poetry, plays, and novels of which two have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His translation of Ireland's national epic is now a text in not only schools in the United States, but countries overseas as well. His nonfiction work on the Tigua Indians, Exiled, won the Southwest History Award. He has been inducted into the Paso Del Norte Writers Hall of Fame, the local chapter of the Texas Institute of Arts and Letters. He spends his time in El Paso, Ireland, and Italy, lecturing on Dante and The Ulster Cycle.