The Rebels of Ireland: The Dublin Saga

From the time of the plantations and Elizabeth's ascendancy, Rutherfurd moves into the grand moments of Irish history: the early-17th-century "Flight of the Earls", when the last of the Irish aristocracy fled the island; Oliver Cromwell's brutal oppression and confiscation of lands a half-century later; and the romantic, doomed effort of "The Wild Geese" to throw off Protestant oppression at the Battle of the Boyne. The reader sees through the eyes of the victims and the perpetrators alike the painful realities of the anti-Catholic penal laws, the catastrophic famine and the massive migration to North America, the rise of the great nationalists O'Connell and the tragic Parnell, the glorious Irish cultural renaissance of Joyce and Yeats, and finally, the triumphant founding of the Irish Republic in 1922.

Written with all the drama and sweep that has made Rutherfurd the best-selling historical novelist of his generation, The Rebels of Ireland is both a necessary companion to The Princes of Ireland and a magnificent achievement in its own right.