Mark J Mayfield

The Fate of Irish Sons Mark J Mayfield

IN THE MISTS OF IRISH LORE is the story of legendary Gaelic heroes, Cuchullin and Ferdia, fast friends that Destiny ruled must face each other in a battle to the death. The struggle lasted three days with each warrior suffering severe wounds, but in the end one had to triumph and the other must die, his blood sanctifying the soil of ancient Ireland. In this epic story, as though through that glass darkly, Sean O'Hanlon and Denis McCullen play out their own Destiny as warriors of a modern time. Sean, an Irish American, is irrevocably linked to the land of his birth - that ancient place, its history and its people - as if by a cruel design. Sean struggles to make sense of the legacy left to him by successive generations of family. Returning to Derry as a youth during The Troubles between Catholics and Protestants, fateful bonds were formed with his beloved Maggie and a friend and rival, Denis McCullen. When Sean is drawn into the nightmare of violence while attempting to save others and nearly loses his life escaping a police trap, he becomes an outlaw himself. Prophetically, Denis, who becomes a member of the Provisional Wing of the IRA, before being banished by them to pursue a life of an international terrorist, convinces Sean that their separate paths are destinies entwined for life. Sean leaves Maggie behind and becomes a Navy SEAL and begins to doubt, then curse the choices he has made along the way. He longs for his precious Maggie. Their love transcended their own mortality, yet whether by God's design or his own ill choices, they could never be together. Sean embarks on a life journey that takes him from The Troubles in Ulster to the jungles of Southeast Asia; from California beaches to the wind-swept mountains of Iran; and from the polished Pentagon corridors to the cool morning skies above the Iraqi desert. Like pieces of a puzzle, every turn in his life is an integral part of a prophetic equation. The final piece is a terrorist plot that leads Sean back to Maggie and Denis where it began in Derry and the climactic confrontation. Through it all, Sean strives to shape his own destiny, only to succumb time and time again to those unyielding bonds, The Fate of Irish Sons.