Pat McDermott, A Band of Roses: Author Guest Post 7.06.09

A Band of Roses is an alternate history adventure set in modern day Ireland. The "what if" premise of the story supposes that Irish High King Brian Boru survived the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 A.D. and founded a dynasty that rules Ireland to this day.

Crown Princess Talty Boru, the daughter of the current King Brian, is the heir to the throne, though she wishes she weren’t. She’d prefer to pursue a military career, but she’s resigned to her royal fate until England’s Prince Geoffrey seizes a tiny Irish island in the North Atlantic and the oil-rich ocean bed around it. Geoffrey plans to return the island to Ireland in exchange for oil wells in the Irish sea. He proposes a conciliatory treaty that would marry Talty to the unbalanced young English King. Talty agrees, as the terms demand that she relinquish her title as heir to the throne. She believes she’s free of her duties as crown princess, but a murder attempt on her wedding night turns her life upside down.
Multiple attempts on Talty’s life force King Brian to send her away to protect her, though he unwittingly sends her into further danger. From Japan to California, Talty must hide her true identity until her elders can set things straight. She can’t disguise her ingrained training as one of Ireland’s ancient Fian warriors, however.

Her recruitment into International Security Forces’ top secret Peregrine Project allows her to visit strange worlds, one an eleventh century Ireland preparing for the Battle of Clontarf. She finds romance and adventureand brings back a discovery worth more than any oil well, yet all she wants is to return to her family and her lifelong friend and protector Neil Boru, the adoptive cousin she secretly loves and can’t have—or so she thinks. Talty’s warrior cousin has a secret of his own, one that emerges as the Boru clan works with England’s MI6 to thwart an invasion of Ireland and bring Talty home.

AUTHOR GUEST POST…All four of my grandparents played priceless roles in my life. I have so many fond memories of them, I can’t help wondering if their decision to emigrate to the United States when they did cheated my mother and father in a mean way. Are my parents defective for not knowing their own grandparents? Are so many Americans who’ve lost a link somewhere in their heritage?

I don’t own a mansion filled with portraits depicting a centuries-old family lineage. My mother’s forbears were farmers and teachers, and her parents left Ireland because they wanted something better. Of my father’s family I know nothing. They may have been pirates, criminals, or some other dastardly sort of scoundrel banished from the Emerald Isle for their misdeeds. Most likely it wasn’t that romantic. I’d guess they left as so many others did: to improve their economic lot.

This lack of a doting yet nurturing support group, of having to start from emotional scratch, may be one reason many of us feel compelled to explore our connection with the past. The need to find what we sense we’ve lost drives many of us to research our personal histories, whether by reading of bygone days, getting out and visiting museums, or getting down and dirty by digging up artifacts.

I suspect this longing to understand the past has helped fuel the tremendous popularity of time travel novels. Reading them is another way to connect with the past, one that safely allows a mysterious ancestor to be that pirate we imagined him to be. Writing them is a way to manipulate the past, to invent new ancestors to fill in the blanks, to even become friends with them.

A Band of Roses isn’t technically a time travel novel. I present Ireland’s past so the story’s main characters see it as a parallel world. Researching a medieval Ireland beset by Viking invasions started as a romantic endeavor, though I quickly found myself giving thanks to be living in less violent times. Yet I enjoyed my visit to the Plains of Clontarf and felt a kinship with the people I met there.

Who knows? Perhaps a kindhearted ancestor was guiding my fingers over the keyboard.