Blood-Dark Track, the: A Family History - Hardcover

Published family annals generally fall into just two categories: fascinating and why did the author and publisher think anyone else would be interested. This particular one is definitely in the first category. Joseph O'Neill, like most young people, was obviously aware of his parents' fathers and mothers but had no special interest in exactly who they were or what they had done. Two chance discoveries changed all that. He found in the storeroom of the Mersin hotel, run by his formidable chain-smoking Turkish grandmother, an account by her husband, Joseph Dakad, of his arrest in Palestine in 1942 on suspicion of being a German spy. Later, when the O'Neills were living in The Hague, he found some cuttings enclosed in a Dostoevsky novel revealing details of his paternal grandfather Jim O'Neill's death in Eire in 1973, disclosing that he had been a prominent member of the IRA. These two coincidences set Joseph O'Neill on a quest to find out about the lives of his grandfathers which has resulted in a book outstanding for its frankness about political fanaticism, injustice, family secrecy, loyalty and delusions and its recognition and honest portrayal of two men, flawed like the rest of us but steadfast in their beliefs and attachment to their families.

In this story of a family and its place in history, Joseph O'Neill reconstructs the fate of two men he never met and who never met each other, but who have had a profound effect on his life. His Turkish and Irish grandfathers, Joseph Dakad and James O'Neill, were both vigorous and strong-willed men, patriarchs and visionaries. And they were each imprisoned, one in Palestine and the other in Ireland, during World War II. The Turkish hotelier and entrepreneur was suspected by the British of being a spy for the Germans, and left a vertiginous testament of his experiences in colonial jails. The Irish labourer and poacher was a dedicated IRA man in Cork, an area where memories of the Black and Tan war were recent and bitter. In retracing their lives, their grandson writes about the sunlit world of provincial Turkey, and the fierce passions of rural Southern Ireland. The secrets he uncovers are haunting and tragic, and resonate in him and his family. He explores the different meanings of a passionate commitment, and how compelling and dangerous they can be.