MWSA Review
No Hero's Welcome offers us a very close and personal account of the struggles one fictional family in Ireland had in the early 1900's. Author Jeffrey K. Walker has done a masterful job in describing life and mixed loyalties that divided families against themselves. Mostly set in the decade beginning in 1916, this was the time of the Irish Revolution.

As a recently widowed woman mourns the loss of her husband to a war that also returned a crippled son to her, she is faced with another, younger son who begins to hate the English. Eda, the mother, runs a tavern frequented by friends and regular customers. Included in this mix are loyalists to the English crown and revolutionaries who strive to keep their loyalties secret. Violence and betrayal surround them and are only hidden by a thin veil of secrecy.

This book is thought provoking yet still an easy read.

Review by Bob Doerr (March 2022)

 

Author's Synopsis

The horrors of the First World War devastated many a Dublin family and the Brannigans weren’t spared. Struggling to get past their heartache, the family finds itself divided by both the rebellion against British rule and the wide Atlantic. Devoted matriarch Eda Brannigan witnesses her family unraveling. Sean and Molly make startling choices with potentially lethal consequences. Francis steeps in a drunken angry stupor. Young Brandon is so eerily quiet. Eda desperately wishes her beloved firstborn, Deirdre, wasn’t living so far away. But with a determined resolve, Eda soldiers on in her bustling pub, The Gallant Fusilier, where tragedy, triumph and even love unfold. Can this family endure the violence and intrigue of the Easter Rising, the bloody struggle for independence, and a bitter civil war?

ISBN/ASIN: 1947108042, 978-1947108042, B07X1Z232D

Book Format(s): Soft cover, Kindle

Review Genre: Fiction—Historical Fiction

Number of Pages: 280