Irish Lady

November 7, 2011
Baker skillfully blends contemporary and historical romance with a dash of the supernatural in this large-scale tale, first published in 1998, of tumultuous romance during Northern Ireland’s Troubles. In the early 1980s, Meghann McCarthy left behind her impoverished Belfast Catholic neighborhood, torn by urban strife, and her charismatic lover, Michael Devlin, a passionate IRA soldier. Fifteen years later, she’s a leading legal mind in England and he’s accused of murdering a prominent British politician sympathetic to the Irish Republican cause. Meghann takes on Michael’s case, and as their old mutual attraction flares up again, she finds herself strangely dreaming of her ancestor Nuala O’Neill and Nuala’s great love, Rory O’Donnell, one of the 17th century’s last Irish holdouts against Elizabeth I. Baker carries off both complicated romantic plots with panache, but her real achievement lies in avoiding sentimental gushing while accurately depicting the atrocities visited on the Irish by Britain—and by themselves.