Redemption Falls

by Joseph O’Connor

First published 2007

Amazon

3.6(1,486)

America, 1865. As the Civil War ends, Eliza Duane Mooney sets out from Louisiana to find the younger brother she has not seen for four years, one of the many children absorbed into the conflict. Her journey crosses a devastated country and draws together former soldiers, freed people, immigrants, guerrillas, mapmakers and political adventurers whose lives have been altered by battle, displacement and the uncertain meaning of victory.

At the centre of the western territory lies Redemption Falls, governed by the charismatic Irish revolutionary James Con O’Keeffe. Eliza’s search intersects with his damaged household and with survivors carrying private versions of the war. A sequel to Star of the Sea, the novel follows the children of famine emigrants into another national catastrophe, using letters, testimony and competing narrators to show how history is assembled from partial evidence and how reconciliation remains difficult after organised violence.