1916 by Morgan Llewellyn

Morgan Llewellyn wrote a series about members of the Halloran family, focusing on key events in modern Irish history. This book is the first of the series. Although it's called 1916, it begins in 1912. Young Ned Halloran is travelling to the U.S. with his parents to attend his sister's wedding. They're booked on ... the Titanic! This part of the book was very moving as are other passages that describe events such as Bloody Sunday. If you read and enjoyed the Kent Family Chronicles, you'll enjoy this book and perhaps want to go on and read the others in the series: 1921, 1949, 1972 and 1999.

I love historical fiction and so I really wanted to enjoy the book. I didn't for a couple of reasons:

Llewellyn tried to tell too many stories at once. Instead of focusing on just the one who was supposed to be the main character (Ned Halloran), the story moved back and forth between Ned and his sister in America, Kathleen. I really didn't care about Kathleen, her controlling husband or the Catholic priest, Father Paul. I often wondered why we were "going there". That story could have made its own little book and made Ned's story more interesting.

I mentioned the Kent Family Chronicles. Members of that family interacted with real historical people too but not on an intimate level (or so it seemed to me). Ned becomes too involved too quickly with historical characters for me to believe. I don't want to give away too many of the details except to say this--if you're plotting a coup or a revolution, leaders have to be absolutely sure the people they talk to are totally trust worthy. I was surprised at how much information Ned was given so quickly.

Other than those things (which bothered me greatly unfortunately), it was a good book.

1916 was in these challenges: