THIS TROUBLED LAND: Voices from Northern Ireland on the Front Lines of Peace

In the fall of 1998, Rucker, a young American journalist, moved to Belfast to witness the changes that the recent Good Friday peace accords have wrought. In a series of loosely linked chapters that focus on how the "Troubles" have affected the country's citizens, he reviews the genesis of Protestant-Catholic conflict. The event that "sparked off the first widespread rioting," Rucker says, was a 1969 march in Derry—inspired by American civil rights protests—by Catholic activists, during which they were attacked by angry Protestants. Unrest quickly spread to Belfast, and the long dormant IRA was revitalized. The event that galvanized the nationalist community—when "state atrocities radicalized a mass movement"—was Bloody Sunday in January 1972, when the British Army killed 13 Catholics who were participating in another civil rights march. Rucker describes that infamous day from both civilian and army eye-witness accounts in what may be his most gripping chapter. But the heart of his book is about what has happened since the Good Friday accords, which have failed to end the violence. Rucker considers the likes of Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair, a leader in the militant Protestant Ulster Freedom Fighters, and Eddie Copeland, his counterpart in the IRA: to some they are heroes, enforcing justice that the system won't; to others, they are murderers. Has some of the nationalist idealism of the early 1970s been replaced with ahistorical vigilantism in the wake of the peace agreements? Rucker muses. After all, even efforts to hold a St. Patrick's Day Parade acceptable to both Protestant and Catholic fail miserably. Irish revolutionaries have been much romanticized, but Rucker's grim book will make the reader wonder, what price freedom? National ad/promo; 6-city author tour. Agent, Gail Ross. (Feb.)