Torn Away
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Thirteen-year-old Declan lives only for revenge. His mother, father and sister were all killed on the streets of Belfast, and Declan will stop at nothing to settle the score. When he is torn away from his native soil and sent to live with relatives in Canada, he is disgusted by their efforts to welcome him into their lives, and determined to make them regret their hospitality. Can he devise a plan to return to Ireland and rejoin his cause? Or will the strange beauty of his new life and surroundings weaken his resolve?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After his mother and younger sister are killed in a terrorist bombing in their native Belfast, Declan joins the Holy Terrors, a youth gang modeled after the IRA. When the authorities catch up with him, Declan is sent--very much against his will--to a small town in British Columbia, to live with his father's brother Matthew and his family. Angry, embittered and determined to return to Ireland as soon as possible, Declan has little affection for his gentle uncle, whom he considers a ``meddling, do-good fixer'' and a cowardly runaway. He himself undertakes several daring escapes. Gradually, however, the tranquility of his new home leads Declan to reexamine his notions of courage and heroism. Flashbacks give a bitter taste of the violence that forms a part of everyday life in Belfast and of Declan's impassioned fury. As the narrative moves to its easily anticipated happy ending, however, the plot starts seeming forced. Burdened by the novel's overaccentuated messages of pacifism, characterization suffers: Matthew and his wife, for instance, are so sweet-natured that they don't seem entirely real. Ages 12-up.
