by Jack L. Kennedy
Weaving threads of life into a readable tapestry can be very difficult. That art is complicated when an author takes a true story, about a relative, and tries to make it work on a larger stage for general public viewing.
But in It May Be Forever--An Irish Rebel on the American Frontier, David M. Quinn writes of his great great uncle Michael with both love and a researcher's precision, giving the reader what famed Nebraska writer Wright Morris called "a sense of place." By the final page, we understand not only who Michael Quinn was, a pioneering Irish immigrant whose life from 1846 to 1934 had an incredible geographic and emotional span, but we are reminded who we are as a country and where we have been.
Quinn's book begins with Mike's birth in Ireland and weaves its way expertly through Irish independence battles, the struggle to exist under a rather feudal system, and the pendulum swing between hope and despair. Quinn does not call the volume a strict biography, since some scenes, some transitions were, of necessity, fictionalized. The genre can be difficult. The author can be so close to the subject he loses perspective, or tosses in too many adoring adjectives, or shatters the truth rather than merely bending it a bit to tie the tale together. David Quinn, however, performs this delicate balancing act very well.
The story is moving and compelling, from the poverty-stricken, nationalistic early days in Ireland to the trails of the true American West that Mike traveled, until his Depression days death in Rapid City, SD in 1934 after making peace with the family he had once abandoned.
The book takes us from Mike Quinn's teenage days as a textile worker and Fenian Irish national zealot in his homeland. through the reunion of all three Quinn brothers in Lawrence, MA as they sought a new life. Michael at one point was a soldier in the ill-fated and short-lived Irish invasion of Canada, meant to be a diversion in the post US Civil War era to distract and irritate the hated Brits. He became a frontier freighter, carrying telegraph poles and railroad ties to the frontier, through Nebraska City, NE, Cheyenne, WY, and Deadwood, SD. There was even a foray into cattle ranching in Cuba, and, finally, Rapid City. He fought Indians, but his personal experience, including the haunting memory of a boy's death as he watched during the Massacre at Wounded Knee, forever changed Quinn as he matured into a wealthy cattleman and landowner. He ultimately felt that the native Americans were having their land, if not their soul, taken from them--much like the Irish felt when he was a young boy at home in Kilkeeven Parish.
Quinn understood prejudice. When his family arrived in Massachusetts, "No Irish Need Apply" signs were common in U.S. shops. Like others before and after them, the Irish immigrants had to battle to exist as they proved who they were and what they could be, taking menial jobs which, like the textile mills, often ultimately killed them. But their spirit helped build the new country, even when they were often unsure what was awaiting them just down the trail.
Yes, the book has several threads and covers a great deal of geographic and historic territory, but the weaving is often expert. David Quinn the author loved Michael Quinn the pioneer, obviously. But he also did his research, used good judgment and balance, and expressed himself colorfully but clearly.
Uncle Mike would be proud of David.
Title - It May Be Forever--An Irish Rebel on the American Frontier
Author - David M. Quinn
Publisher - AuthorHouse (9-30-05)/292 pp.
hardcover--ISBN: 9781420880922; also available in paperback--ISBN: 9781420880915
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