In these the second and third book of The Angira Trilogy we meet the people of the Angirish Diaspora. Angira is a fictional but recognizable Celtic island, home to crofters and miners, rough traditional and poor on the surface, rich, complex and ancient to those who know her. Countless working men and women have left Angira and live all over the world, in search of new lives. They often find life is hard, harsh and more complicated than they bargained for. Too often their lives are caught up in stories bigger than they are, over which they have no control. Power struggles great and small, stories and legacies generations long, suffering on a soul level yet shared by all of Angirish blood, mark their lives forever. Enter charismatic, passionate characters such as Patrick McKee, protagonist of the second book, The Angira Legacy. A task is given him as part of his inheritance from the mysterious Rosaleen McKee, to see memorials put up on the island, which seems simple enough until Patrick is drawn into the complex web of island life and its myriad connections, economic and political, to the modern world. The setting is recognizable yet politically different from our own world. We begin to see clearly the moral bankruptcy of the rich and, in opposition to it, the power of those who might seem powerless. Dooley’s stories deal in such contradictions and fashion them into tight, recurring Celtic knots, which draw the reader in to weave and reweave. In the third and final book, The Catalyst, we meet the catalyst himself: a never named narrator in the first person. He is an orphan who travels the world, driven to use a charismatic power he recognizes but cannot control. Wherever he goes – Australia, prison, Africa, the sea, French Canada – he is the relentless epicenter of both local and world events. Both stories take the reader around the world with the people of the Celtic Diaspora and deep into their lives and struggles.
393 pages
