Dwelling Place of Dragons, Book Report

I promised to report once I'd read my cousin's book, Dwelling Place for Dragons. (The title is from Jeremiah 51:37, King James version:"And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant.") The cover of the book shows orange and green dragons encircling an abandoned Irish cottage.

The time is 1830 or so to 1849, the place is Newry, Ulster, and its environs. The main characters are James Harshaw, Presbyterian elder and farmer; John Martin, nephew of James, a younger and more well-to-do farmer, college educated, a member of "Young Ireland"; and George Henderson, friend and classmate of John, editor of the Newry Telegraph, and supporter of the established order.

The book provides insight into:

• the interplay among religious groups and political and religious leaders: Daniel O'Connell and his son leading the Repeal Association and the Catholic Church on one side, the Protestants groups and the Orange marching order on the other, and the people in the middle, the British establishment ruling the country and the Young Ireland movement, representing a more secular (or at least cross-religious) nationalism, a conservative radicalism. (The whole mess parallels Iraq today, with religious parties dominant and the secularists isolated.)
  
• the agitation for Repeal of the Act of Union (which put Ireland under the British Parliament instead of having their own parliament under Queen Victoria).
• the famine, and the disputes over how to provide relief.
  
• world affairs, particularly the Revolution in France of 1848, which revived the revolutionary enthusiasm of 1789 (read Jefferson from Paris) and seemed to prefigure revolution in other countries (I was also reminded of 1968, with all the upheavals around the world)
  
• British politics, the alternation of Whig and Tories, the repeal of the Corn Laws which hurt the Irish farmers (I was reminded of the protests of Mexican corn farmers against the lowering of trade barriers through NAFTA), and the response of the British governing classes and those in Ulster to the agitation over Repeal and then over the response to the famine
  

It's published under Amazon's Booksurge program (i.e. print on demand, self published). Is it a great read? No, not compared to a David McCullough. The great virtue of the book is that it's very much tied to the available data so that the events of "history" are seen through the focus on the three men and Newry. Marjorie relies on original source material, most notably the James Harshaw diaries and Henderson's Newry Telegraph (newspaper). Her sources don't permit flights of fancy nor great insight into personalities. The book climaxes with the conviction of John Martin, who was sentenced to be transported "beyond the seas" for 10 years for advocating the overthrow of Queen Victoria. His ship leaves Ireland just before the violence at Dolly's Brae between the Orange Order marchers and the Catholic Ribbonmen.

Marjorie mostly sticks to the facts, without editorializing. [Actually, that statement may be wrong. It may just be that her judgments agree with mine, dislike for religious extremism and a regard for those who tried to take a different course.] It's her first book, and hopefully not the last.