1996. When Fionn Byrne, aged sixteen years, watched his younger sister, Saoirse, go off to America in an effort to protect her from any further harm in the Troubles of Ireland, he'd no idea what lie ahead for them. Remaining in Belfast, 'Finn' had a bit of tidying up to do. A young soldier with the Provisional Irish Republican Army and hellbent on revenge for the slaughter of their parents, he would see 'Sersh' off before exacting retribution on the Protestant paramilitary polis who orphaned them. Once done, he would join her. Start a new life in the United States, a place synonymous with freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom from colonialism.
It was not to be.
2010. Sara Browne, an Irish-American, has lived in a Boston, Massachusetts neighbourhood since aged nine. A promising student, she graduates from a private primary school to matriculate at Boston College, where she is recruited to labour for the Belfast Project, a university research programme meant to collect the oral histories of those involved in the Troubles.
2020. Victoria Rainwater Hamil is a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., standing for the grossly underrepresented Native Americans and Native Alaskans, victims of colonialism, at the nation's capital. It is her life's work to see that reparations are made to the people of penury, living marginal lives, on marginalised land, in a territory that was once their own.
Touching, thought-provoking, at times both funny and infuriating, What We Hold Dear is a page-turning exploration of these interwoven stories over time and place. An insightful look at the past and present, the novel provides a window into ourselves through the nuanced characters, which may divulge a bit about the future.
