THE CANAL BRIDGE

A quarter million Irish men served in the British army in World War One, fighting the Germans. While these men were dying in the trenches, a small band of their countrymen in Dublin rebelled in 1916 against the British, claiming the SUPPORT of Germany. The latter men were hailed as heroes, while those fighting in the war came home to a country whose political landscape had changed.

Ireland 1913, on the eve of the First World War. Matthias Wrenn and Con Hatchel, inseparable friends, join the British army in search of escape, adventure, the wonder of exotic lands, and the security of regular money in their pockets. To some they are making something of their lives; to others, they are traitors to Ireland. They are excited to sail to their first posting in India, but are re-deployed and diverted to France as stretcher-bearers -– to fields "made liquid by the blood and guts of boy soldiers." For four years Con and Matt become part of the terrible savagery of the Somme, Ypres, and Passchendaele. Back home in the Irish midlands, Con's sister and Matt's sweetheart, Kitty, recalls their carefree childhood on the banks of the local canal, and hopes for a future after the war. But as the lads battle for survival amidst the horror of the trenches, the Easter Rebellion against British rule begins in Dublin and casts divisive shadows across the country. The boys return to an Ireland they do not recognize, a hostile and divisive place with too many reminders of the battlefields they try to scrub from their memory. THE CANAL BRIDGE is a visceral, lyrical evocation of the physical and emotional devastation of the First World War; it is also is a compelling story of friendship, love, and tragedy that lingers long in the memory. A quarter million Irish men served in the British army in WWI, fighting the Germans. While these men were dying in the trenches, a small band of their countrymen in Dublin rebelled in 1916 against the British, claiming the SUPPORT of Germany. The latter men have been heroicized, while those fighting in the war came home to a country whose political landscape had changed. Tom Phelan was born in 1940 in Ireland and raised in County Mountmellick. He was ordained in 1965, emigrated to the USA in 1970 and left the priesthood in 1977. He now lives in New Jersey, where he teaches English. He is author of two previous novels: In the Season of the Daisies (1993) and Iscariot (1999).