Children of isaac

the long version

... Hardly knowing what he was doing, for it was pure animal instinct, he struck his own father across the face ... It's 1914 and tensions mount in a family already strained by religious differences and now about to divide along ideological lines with the outbreak of war in Europe and the growing nationalist movement in Ireland. Children of Isaac is a wholly absorbing and brilliantly evoked piece of historical fiction. Set against the backdrop of events that helped shape the Irish nation, this is the story of Protestant Isaac, Catholic Annie and their children - twins David and Becky, their deaf-mute sister, Poor Ruth, and little Sammy, Isaac's favorite - a working class family living in Dublin in the early years of the last century. How can Annie and her children keep secret from a domineering Isaac David's decision to join the Irish Volunteers, or Becky's involvement with a boy from the social under-class? These are questions that will hold tragic conclusion during the dramatic and violent Easter Rising that erupted in Dublin in 1916. In this dark and gritty novel, the heartbreak of the human condition is explored without compromise.