One day, Tessa, a producer for a weekly political radio program at the Belfast office of the BBC, looks casually at a nearby television monitor and freezes when she sees her sister Marian:
She is standing with two men outside a petrol station, by a row of fuel pumps. Her ambulance must have been sent out to a call, though for some reason she isn’t wearing her uniform.
“The police are appealing for witnesses after an armed robbery in Templepatrick,” says the closed caption. A ringing starts in my ears. Only Marian’s face is in view of the security camera, the two men are turned away . . . .
Marian has something in her hands. She is leaning down and pulling it toward her. It takes me a moment to understand what I’m watching, as her hair and then her face seem to disappear. When she straightens, she’s wearing a black ski mask.
Title: Trespasses
Author: Louise Kennedy
Publication: Riverhead, hardcover, 2022
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: Northern Ireland, 1975Description: Cushla is a primary school teacher at St. Dallan’s near Belfast, who serves in her family’s pub when her brother Eamonn needs help with the uneasy mixture of Catholics and Protestant customers.
Title: The Twelfth Day of July: A Novel of Modern Ireland
Author: Joan Lingard
Publication: Thomas Nelson, hardcover, 1970
Genre: Middle-grade fiction
Setting: Belfast, Northern Ireland, 20th centuryDescription: Sadie and Tommy are Protestants, Kevin and Brede are Catholics – they live just a few streets apart but attend different schools, shop in different stores, and have different attitudes about the forthcoming July celebration.
