Now and in the Hour of Our Death

May 5, 2014
The Irish Troubles of the 1970s and ’80s provide the background for Taylor’s suspenseful sequel to 2013’s Pray for Us Sinners. In 1983, Davy McCutcheon has served nine years of a 40-year sentence for arms possession and the murder of a British soldier during a raid on a Northern Ireland farmhouse where IRA soldiers were hiding—a raid that thwarted a plot to assassinate the British prime minister. Davy still dreams of his former lover, Fiona Kavanagh, who has built a new life for herself in Vancouver, British Columbia. Davy’s closest friend, Jimmy Ferguson, who has also settled in Vancouver, takes Fiona’s photo during a chance meeting and sends it to Davy. On seeing the photo, Davy decides to participate in an IRA-led prison break—and to participate in one last attack against the British before escaping, with IRA consent, to Vancouver. The moral ambiguities of the Irish conflict add to the novel’s complexity. Agent: Natalia Aponte, Aponte Literary.

July 1, 2014
This gripping thriller is about love and the Troubles-the love of a man and woman for each other, for freedom and for Ireland.Davy McCutcheon, introduced in Pray for Us Sinners (2000), is a bomb maker for the Provisional IRA. He's deeply in love with Fiona Kavanagh, but he's been sentenced to decades in the Maze prison. She immigrates to Vancouver and in time comes to love another man-but her love for Davy never dies. Then, after nine years, Davy and fellow inmates stage a prison break. Unlike some others, Davy decides he's through with violence. All he wants is to reunite with Fiona, which will be a tough task indeed. Never mind that she may have moved on forever. He may not even make it out of Northern Ireland alive, because his comrades insist on using his skills for their dangerous plot to bomb a police barracks. The novel's setting goes back and forth between Fiona's Vancouver and Davy's County Tyrone. Fiona now leads a peaceful life with a decent job and a good man, while Davy may be recaptured or killed at any moment. Both storylines are engrossing, but all the real action is with Davy. The killing, the weapons caches, the plotting and betrayal contrast sharply with the idyllic freedom of a peaceful and quiet Vancouver; the only common feature of both settings is the rain. Although this book is a sequel, it reads well as a stand-alone thriller/love story. Davy wants no part of killing anymore, but the choice may not be his. Can he find love and peace, or must he bomb his way to freedom? Taylor writes in rich physical and cultural detail, holding the reader's attention right to the end.An engrossing tale nicely balancing war and peace.

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