Synopsis:
The legendary author of Trinity explores the saga of the Irish people through the Larkin family in an epic that ranges from Ireland to New Zealand, Egypt, and Gallipoli and captures the love and loss, triumph and tragedy. 350,000 first printing. $200,000 ad/promo. Tour.
Reviews:
Nearly 20 years after Trinity, his bestselling chronicle of the Irish struggle against British rule during the latter half of the 19th century, Uris returns to the Emerald Isle with a story set during the WWI years. The conflict between two of the three dominant families of Trinity, the tempestuous Larkins and their staid British counterparts, the Hubbles, is the focus here. Uris begins by tracing the Larkin legacy from patriarch Liam's exile to New Zealand, where he becomes squire of a sheep farm; his brother, Conor, becomes a legendary Irish revolutionary. Another Larkin progeny, Liam's son Rory, is acclaimed as a war hero after fighting with the British at Gallipoli, while Rory's brother Dary takes Catholic clerical vows, only to have a powerful love drive him to question both celibacy and his calling. Uris balances the struggles of the Larkins with the more repressed travails of Caroline Hubble, who battles the efforts of her husband to oppress the Irish after losing a pair of sons in the disastrous British battle against the Turks. Sprinkled in as well are several tumultuous marriages and affairs of the heart that introduce a variety of powerful female characters. Tying all together is the voice of Winston Churchill, passages from material based on unpublished Churchill files that provide historical backdrop for the day-to-day events. The first half of the novel is a bit scattered, largely because Uris introduces so many characters so quickly that the Irish struggle against the British tends to get lost. But once he gets all his major characters into battle in WWI, the narrative clips along, with the stirring account of the Battle of Gallipoli, as well as tales of betrayal and assassination prior to the Easter uprising, rivaling the best of his earlier work. Few writers who have tackled the Troubles have exhibited the scope or the organizational skills Uris demonstrates here. 350,000 first printing; $200,000 ad/ promo; Literary Guild main selection; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
After seven quiet years, Uris, one of the most reliably best-selling novelists of the past half-century, returns with more about the Larkins and Hubbles of his megahit, Trinity (1977). This time Uris gives us Liam Larkin immigrating in 1895 to New Zealand, rutting his way into a landed family, and thriving. Liam's elder son, Rory, grows up with the wish to emulate his uncle Conor, an Irish rebel of the first water, especially when that eminence goes down in a blaze of Fenian glory just as World War I erupts. At this point, the narrative backtracks and takes up Conor's full story, which eventually involves him romantically with the wife of the novel's leading Hubble. More characters are introduced, and more romance--of the hardy-har-har hard-ridin', -drinkin', and -brawlin' all-guy variety as well as the hard-breathin' man-woman type. In a major miscalculation, Uris periodically inserts snippets from the ostensible Secret Files of Winston Churchill that, while they add historical detail, sound like nothing the great statesman ever could have written. The story doesn't advance chronologically beyond the birth of the Irish Free State, and that event is entirely off the novel's stage. More than in his other historical romances, the accent here is upon the latter word in the term. Don't be surprised if a red-haired, green-eyed Fabio clone shows up on the dust jacket. Ray Olson
Moving from Trinity to Redemption, Uris continues his saga of Ireland.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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