Bourne in the Wind

Bourne on the Wind 2005

In this, her sixth book, Hazel McIntyre lets us into her heart and mind; what is so extraordinary is the care with which Hazel McIntyre tells the story of the people and events she admires and respects. A historical novelist is a unique kind of patriot: a believer in the Irish way of life who loves it so much that she can talk of the very best and the very worst of our past. In this book, Hazel lets us into the Inishowen of the 1820’s and 30’s through the eyes of her ancestors. It shows us her love of the land, and most of all, her love of the people, all of the people, who have shaped our Island of Ireland over the centuries. - Here is a rich, carefully researched, panoramic novel of the history of a people, magnificently executed, by a storyteller whose masterpiece this book unquestionably is. 

J. H.

As far back as memory would allow, stories of the Moran’s had

been told around turf fires in the big kitchen at Redford.  It was a story that ached to be told. Telling their story became an unforgettable journey into the past that was all consuming.  She felt that unravelling the secrets of the human spirit that had been passed down through the generations, the wisdom that was shared was worth remembering. This story was as much the story of the Inishowen people, her people, as it is  Mary Francis McIntyre’s.  Mary’s struggles, Mary’s joys and the terrible wrench that enforced emigration brought was also the story of all the Island’s peoples, of one hundred and sixty years ago.  And so, all the half -remembered stories that had been related to her, would lead Hannah to walk softly into the realm of what might have been. The rest would be her imagined story. There was so little written information to go on, just a few Baptismal, Burial and Marriage records, just dates and names, but nothing of the essence of Mary or her family. She would stare at the old photographs as if trying to make them speak to her.

Already she could see that thought she tried to capture truth, truth could never be wholly contained in words. At the same moment the mouth is speaking one thing, the heart is saying another, or events are carrying us in one direction while all the while the real life of the spirit is marching in another. As the novel progressed, she herself scarcely knew where truth stopped and fiction began. Therefore, though so much of the story really happened, she set it down in the form of fiction.