Her characters manage to live their lives almost normally for the most part, even finding some fun along the way. Her writing is excellent – descriptive without being “creative” or overly flowery, and she avoids the mawkishness that often comes with stories set in such tragic times. The love affair between Cushla and Michael is also completely credible – this young woman who falls for an older, married man. Kennedy does a great job of evoking her setting, showing the dividing lines, the “occupying” or “peace-keeping” army depending on perspective, the poverty and the fear.
But when Cushla meets Michael Agnew, she finds herself crossing social and cultural lines, and that can be dangerous in a society divided by fear and hate… As a Catholic family amid a Protestant majority, Cushla’s family have learned to keep a neutral profile, tolerating the soldiers who come into the bar blustering and bullying in their youthful arrogance. In a small town just outside Belfast at the height of the Troubles, Cushla teaches primary school children by day and helps out in her brother’s pub by night.
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