April
7, 1868, Ottawa, Ontario, Dominion of Canada
Around 2:30 a.m., following a late night sitting in the House of
Commons, Thomas DArcy McGee, MP for the riding of Montreal
West, is waiting for Mary Ann Trotter to open the locked door of
her Sparks Street Boarding House when someone comes up behind him
and shoots him in the back of the head.
Shortly after 6:00 a.m., blacksmith Pat Byrne is opening his Metcalfe
Street shop when a rider pulls up with news of the assassination.
Growing up in Howth, a village near Dublin, Byrne has been following
McGees chequered career. Now, with the Ottawa police investigating,
and visitors to his smithy
speculating on rumours as to whom the assassin might be, he recalls
McGees part, his own, and the Fenian Brotherhoods numerous
attempts to repeal the 1801 Act of Union with Britain and return
Ireland to an independent country.
Those memories are intertwined with his courtship and amorous marriage
to Caitlin, a free-spirited woman whose ideas about Irish independence—and marriage—often clash with his own.
David Mulhollands fourth novel of dramatized history asks
the question: Who really assassinated Canadas youngest Father
of Confederation?