Heating Help

When I visited Dublin in January, 2003, I spent time in the General Post Office. There, they have a series of paintings on the walls that depict the Easter Rising of 1916. When I got home I realized that I didn't fully understand what had happened then, and what had led to it, so I got this book and I educated myself. Morgan Llywelyn is a wonderful novelist. She places fictional characters into real events and tells the history through their eyes. I had been in so many of the streets in Dublin where much of the events in this book took place. I had put my fingers in the bullet holes that still pock the stone of the GPO. That made it all the richer for me, but even if you've never spent time in Dublin's fair city, you will feel the terror and the passion of that time through this novel. They were hopelessly outnumbered, and they were crushed, but they won in the end and that's what makes this such a wonderfully human story, one that I think you'll enjoy. And I think you'll learn much from it, as I did. And there are two sequels to this novel. The next is 1921 and the last is 1949: A novel of the Free Irish State. All three are superb.