Children's War

Set in Ulster in 1973, this novel follows Michael Connaught, a Protestant officer in the Royal Ulster Constabulary who is uneasy about the brutality around him. Across the divide stands Daniel O'Connell, an eighteen-year-old Catholic who shares his name with the nineteenth-century Irish political leader and has grown tired of carrying it. Daniel is a magnetic figure with a violent scheme to recruit children into a new fighting force in the civil conflict.

The two men first meet as friends, then become rivals who test each other's cunning. Their struggle unfolds against a backdrop of shootings, assassinations and bombings, and each is forced to abandon his comforting beliefs until only harsh truths about human foolishness and purpose remain. Around them move an IRA commander with a surprisingly humane streak, a devoted priest who is also worldly, a determined female militant who refuses to wait for what she wants, and a young Irish woman willing to wait indefinitely.

David Bellin is a retired advertising executive who has won a CLIO Award. He lives with his wife in the farm and vineyard country of New York's Finger Lakes region. An enthusiastic amateur historian, he later wrote Sherman's Chaplain, a novel of the American Civil War, and The Marble King and Other Stories, a short story collection.