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IRISH LACE by Andrew M. Greeley

IRISH LACE

by Andrew M. Greeley

Pub Date: Nov. 17th, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-86234-2
Publisher: Forge

You can take the lass out of Connemara, but never expect to take the old country out of the lass—not even if you transplant her to Chicago, as in this dewy-eyed tale of young lovers who see themselves mirrored at every bend in history. The lovers in question are Dermot Michael Coyne and the fetching Nuala Anne McGrail, whom Dermot has lured from Cararoe to the New World. In Irish Gold (1994), Nuala (who receives visions of the past) and Dermot were able to upend the received wisdom of graybeard historians and establish who really murdered the Irish revolutionary Michael Collins. This time out, Nuala, troubled by screams no one else can hear, pursues a Civil Warera mystery. The screams, she decides, are those of Confederate prisoners of war immured in Chicago's notorious Camp Douglas. The history of the camp has been shadowed by accounts of a Confederate conspiracy to free the prisoners. But Dermot and Nuala's researches suggest otherwise. In fact, she insists, the conspirators would have been pardoned by President Lincoln if only he hadn't been shot the very night he wrote a letter on the matter. The purposes of this lightweight yet heavy-handed historical sidelight are to instigate a hunt for the Lincoln letter and to set Nuala up as the victim of government oppression, as she'll become in true earnest when the Cook County State's Attorney, flaming with embarrassment at the way Nuala has shown up his incompetent investigation of a series of art thefts, has her arrested as an illegal alien and hustled out of the country. It's up to Dermot to prove that although you may take the lass out of the old country, you can't toss her out of Chicago. Father Greeley, who seems to be aiming for YA readers in this slow-motion romance tricked out with just a hint of mystery, writes with a twinkle in every cadence. All the same, only readers as besotted with Nuala as Dermot is will care for the promised sequel.