say nothing

In 1972 during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, a group of intruders barged into the West Belfast home of Jean McConville, and abducted her.  She was thirty-eight years old, the mother of ten children, and she was never seen again.  It was not until 2003, several years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, that her remains were discovered on a beach.

Ten years after this, in 2013, Dolours Price, a front line soldier for the IRA, died.  But in a secret oral history endeavor called The Belfast Project, she had confessed to her involvement in the killing of Jean McConville - and - as this book explains, at the heart of the story is Gerry Adams, who ordered the killing. 

Yet it was Gerry Adams who negotiated peace in Northern Ireland.  What a complex figure he turns out to be.  Furthermore, neither Adams nor Patrick Radden Keefe could have predicted something like Brexit when he began writing this book. How ironic that Brexit might become responsible for finally bringing about a united Ireland.   

Last night, I had the immense privilege of introducing Patrick Radden Keefe at Politics and Prose Bookstore. I began following this story with the publication of his article "Where The Bodies Are Buried" in the New Yorker in 2015 and like many who read it, I never forgot it.  This is a stunning new book - and although I have only just cracked it open, I cannot wait to read it.

#saynothing #belfastproject #patrickraddenkeefe