Bold Sons of Erin

Owen Parry continues his Able Jones series with another book that gives a real sense of time, place and people. This time the place is Able's beloved hometown in the Pensylvania coal fields which turns out to be stranger than anywhere his travels have taken him so far. Once again the author gives us thumbnail sketches of historical figures. This novel has strong gothic elements, which were, for me, the least interesting part of the book. In additon to solving murders which nobody wants solved and working from limited information Able has to deal with his wife and son, who are changing in ways he did not anticipate. He also has to defend his staunch Methodism against enticing secular influences. Able is one hero aware of his own limitations...at least partially. He does not take himself too seriously...in the end. The book ends with a description of the slaughter of federal troops at the battle of Fredericksburg, which is, by itself, reason enough to buy this book.

Owen Parry has given us another gem in his series of Civil War mysteries, and this one is an emerald. *Bold Sons of Erin* takes us to the anthracite coal region of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, the home of our hero, Major Abel Jones (and a region where our author has family roots as well). In *Bold Sons* we meet the Irish miners who settled in the area, learn a bit about their hard lives, and consider both those who fought for liberty wearing Union blue and those who fought for their liberty to stay out of the war. They battled prejudice and the company bosses to eke out a living, and many served valiantly for their new country and died on the fields of Antietam and Fredericksburg. The author gives us much in *Bold Sons* to think about.Parry paints a detailed picture of the coal towns and the region of central and eastern Pennsylvania in the early 1860s. We see the streets and shops and hear the voices and sounds. As other books in the series have done for other settings, *Bold Sons* helps us to imagine what life might have been like in that place and time. That's one of my favorite things about the series and about this book as well.The mystery of the murder -- or rather, murders -- at the heart of the book grabs our attention at the very beginning, as the blade of a shovel hits the wood of a coffin, and the story develops wonderfully around it. In many passages the action is vivid. Again as in the previous four novels in the series, Parry's characters are rich and colorful and his writing makes me Irish green with envy. In every respect, *Bold Sons of Erin* is a very worthy fifth book in the Abel Jones series. As a fan of the series, I enthusiastically recommend it.

After a recent discussion of James M. McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era", several students asked me what other books I would recommend in order to get a sense of what 19th century Americans were like. Their primary interest is in understanding why people responded as they did to the Civil War. Among those titles I suggested were several novels. Owen Parry's "Abel Jones" series was in that group. The latest addition to the Jones saga, "Bold Sons of Erin" goes a long way toward helping today's reader understand the great divergence in attitudes and motivations of those living in the United States during the Civil War. They were not all singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" by any means.I think this author is doing us a great service by exploring the complex nature of our society in that period. His curiosity is contagious and his readers are the beneficiaries of his beautifully written stories that probe, investigate, and explain the Americans of the 1860s. I admire Owen Parry's skill in every aspect of his plot development, with his characters wonderfully drawn, and the suspense building to an exciting and satisfying climax. Having said that, I have to say that I enjoy his marvelous descriptions of Civil War combat even more.The last chapter of this book describes the surreal quality of the repeated gallant assaults of Ambrose Burnsides' Union army against Lee's Confederates at Fredericksburg, Virginia on December 13, 1862. As seen through the eyes of Major Abel Jones, it was a day all Americans should never forget. He is a wonderful observer of the American scene and I will always be grateful that Owen Parry is telling his story.

"Bold Sons of Erin" is the fifth in a series of mystery novels set in the American Civil War. Owen's protagonist is Major Abel Jones: Union Army sleuth, fervent Welsh immigrant and believer in the American dream, veteran sergeant-major in the British Indian Army, Methodist teetotler, reformed hell-raiser, devoted husband, natural and adoptive father. This story is set in the Pennsylvania anthracite coal country (that Parry loves and understands so well), where Abel Jones searches for the murderer of a Union brigadier general, another immigrant with an interesting past. In the process, Jones encounters Irish immigrant coal miners and a failed priest, intent in their own ways upon frustrating his efforts. There are the usual twists and turns of plot along the way, and a fascinating look at mid-19th Century social and political history. Familiar characters re-appear, and interesting new ones emerge from the story. For experienced Owen Parry fans, this book will not disappoint.For those benighted ones not yet familiar with his work, I strongly suggest this latest effort; but, better yet, start at the beginning with "Faded Coat of Blue" and work happily through the series. You need have no particular interest in the American Civil War, per se, but you will learn a lot. What IS needed is an appreciation of a first-rate novelist at work: working hard, teaching and having fun. Yet like all truly talented novelists, Parry is more that a mere story-teller. He is a social philosopher, a poet of the human spirit, an historian of the American immigrant experience, a wonderful conjuror of words and images, a delightfully mischevious chronicler of European tribal ethnic prejudice and slurs, and an optimist of the first water. He is a master of dialect, and he is getting better at it with each book.If you find yourself re-reading whole passages in order to delight in and absorb Parry's imagery and use of language and telling insights into human nature, then you will have gotten the whole point of his work. Enjoy!

Owen Parry's latest installment in the Abel Jones series is just as moving, disturbing and eye opening as the first four novels. His sensitive and insightful portrayal of immigrants and their part in the United States of the the 1860's is absolutely dynamic, drawing the reader into a corner of our history too often ignored in the history books. In his latest, The Bold Sons of Erin, Mr. Parry returns to the plight of the poor Irish laborers, this time in the coal mines just outside of Pottersville, the home town of the hero, Abel Jones. Abel has been asked to investigate the grisly murder of a mysterious Union general. His encounters with the Irish, the German, his fellow Welsh, and the most confounding race of all, the politicians, require all his faculties as a soldier and a Methodist as he sorts through a maze of violence, greed, racism and deadly passions. His encounters with his wife are no walk in the park either. The tension between his old fashioned morality and her modern sensibilities make for some of the funniest scenes in the book. Of course the funniest scenes of the book are those with the irrepresible Irishman Jimmy Molloy, who forces his help on Abel Jones in an attempt to escape some of his own marriage woes. A bittersweet and haunting novel with one of the most well drawn protaganists in Civil War fiction, I loved every page and recommend it whole-heartedly.