Christopher Bland

Two boys are growing up in County Kerry, Irish Tomas Sullivan and Anglo-Irish John Burke, close friends from different tribes. This is Ireland in 1919, and their friendship will be torn apart in the War of Independence and in the Civil War that follows.

The entwined fates of the Burkes and the Sullivans are played out over three generations, in Kerry, Spain, Northumberland, Mount Athos and finally back in Kerry, where the two families meet again.

Subtle, gripping, beautifully written, ashes In The Wind is rooted in the history of Christopher Bland's own Anglo-Irish family, and brings to vivid life the people and places of 20th-century Ireland in a story of love, violence and redemption.