Redemption Falls

Max Byrd

Readers who like their plots clear and coherent and their prose clean and Hemingwayesque will drop this book in a hurry. Readers with a taste for inspired Joycean wordplay and a tolerance for narrative anarchy will scoop it up in delight.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Irish author O'Connor (Star of the Sea) delivers a highly stylized post-Civil War period pastiche centered on Redemption Falls, a tumultuous frontier town in the Mountain Territory (presumably in present day Utah or Montana). Told through the posters, correspondence, poems/songs, newspaper articles and interview transcripts collected in the early 20th century by a university professor (and nephew of one of the book's prominent characters), the narrative follows acting governor James Con O'Keeffe as he feuds with his ravishing wife, Lucia-Cruz McLelland, about the mute 12-year-old drummer boy Con takes in and wants to adopt. The boy, Jeddo Mooney, is in a bad way and unaware that his tenacious older sister, Eliza Duane Mooney, is hiking from war-ravaged Louisiana to find him. (Her journey is its own mini-epic.) Con's past as an English criminal who barely escaped the noose and his behavior as an American politician demonstrate his noble but flawed character, while a chorus of minor voices add texture to a narrative already rich with a medley of languages, dialects and clashing cultural mores. The novel is complex, ambitious and at times difficult (many characters are uneducated, and their journals and letters prove to be occasionally impenetrable). O'Connor succeeds as a ventriloquist who brings to life a wide cross-section of Americana. (Oct.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Library Journal

When a seasoned author like Ireland's O'Connor (Star of the Sea) writes historical fiction, it is rich with more than facts, dates, and famous faces. It becomes a living, breathing narrative, envisioned by an artist. This is what O'Connor's latest offers readers seeking a style that goes beyond conventional storytelling. To explore the experience of Irish immigrants during the U.S. Civil War and the expansion of the American West, O'Connor uses a variety of narrative voices and epistolary forms of storytelling that change the tempo and meaning of his tale. Among his characters is Eliza Duane Mooney, who is trekking across post-Civil War America in a twisted quest. Lucia-Cruz McLelland is a beautiful artisan who discards her suitors in New York City to forge a life in the desolate town of Redemption Falls with war hero and revolutionary James Con O'Keefe. A runaway slave living with O'Keefe also plays a role at this crossroads of the world, holding her past in the flickering light and turning her losses into hope. Beautifully written, this work is recommended for all historical fiction collections.
—Ron Samul

Kirkus Reviews

Immigrants, vagabonds and rebels cross paths in the bloody wake of the American Civil War. Irish novelist O'Connor crafts an emotional sequel, of sorts, to his much-lauded previous immigrant fable (Star of the Sea, 2003). In picking up the loose threads from Star of the Sea, some 18 years after the ship arrived in America, the author constructs this fascinating, mercurial historical epic. It begins with a girl, Eliza Mooney, the daughter of nanny Mary Duane from the previous book, who walks, barefoot, clothes in tatters, across the emotionally bankrupt South in search of her wayward brother Jeremiah, known to her as Jeddo. Her journey points her toward Redemption Falls, a cruel and nearly lawless settlement in the heart of the Western frontier. Her passage will cost her dearly, but it brings her into the orbit of dozens of other outlandish primary characters including errant cartographer Allen Winterton, an expressive black slave called Elizabeth Longstreet and a rough-and-tumble Irish outlaw named Johnny Thunders. Though all are gripping in their own way, they ultimately fall under the purview and shadow of James Con O'Keeffe, a flamboyant Irish republican, anarchist and skillful raconteur who has sweet-talked and schemed his way into the governorship of his rural kingdom. O'Connor pieces together the scraps of their lives, employing oral histories, translated letters, poems, daguerreotypes and even wanted posters. The transitions between passages can be jarring, but the richness of the overall effect is undeniable. A striking Western epic elevated by a Greek chorus of deviant narrators. Agent: Carole Blake/Blake Friedmann Literary Agency