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Fact-Based Novel Brings to Life
Story of Irish Rebel on the American Frontier
“Master storyteller, David Quinn, erases time. As I read It May Be Forever, I starved in the potato famine in Ireland, I breathed cotton lint in the mills of Lawrence, I sucked prairie dust on the bullwhacker trail, I looked deep into the heart of a sweat lodge fire. To transport the reader is the writer’s job. Quinn does just that.”
Mary Sojourner, novelist of the Southwest & occasional commentator on National Public Radio
“The Irish Diaspora is a large historical canvas stretching over many centuries. Driven into exile ... the dispossessed Irish struggled for survival in their new lands. Each individual’s struggle could merit a book in itself.
“It May Be Forever: An Irish Rebel on the American Frontier is one such story. David Quinn chooses to tell the story in novel form. It works brilliantly, for David shows his dexterity as a storyteller is equally worthy of his subject. It’s a book that should be listed among the great Irish diasporic accounts, told with skill and artistry by an author of whom I am sure we will hear more.”
Peter Berresford Ellis
Noted Celtic scholar, writer, and novelist
It May Be Forever recounts the real-life adventures and tragedy of Michael Quinn (1846–1934). Born into famine-era poverty in rural Ireland, Michael and his family flee to England, where Michael becomes a child laborer in the textile mills of Lancashire. Faced with British prejudice and discrimination, he joins the Fenian rebels, a group determined to free Ireland from British colonial rule. Chronic unemployment, however, drives him to America, where an ill-fated Fenian invasion of Canada lands him on the untamed plains of the Wild West.
Faced with unaccustomed opportunity, Michael quickly abandons his fight against oppression. In pursuit of a great fortune, he turns away from family and friends, and supports the movement for the dispossession of Native Americans of their lands and livelihood in the Black Hills of South Dakota. When the horror of the massacre at Wounded Knee gives rise to demons of conscience, he is plagued with recurring nightmares from which only a Lakota holy man offers any hope of redemption.
It May be Forever is a cautionary tale that shows how the many small decisions of life can create the most unintended consequences, and how easily a man of strong convictions may become that which he most despises.
David M. Quinn was born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in 1945 and grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. He was educated at Wheeling Jesuit University and Fordham University. Thirty years in the domestic and international telecommunications industry culminated in a five-year expatriation in London. An interest in genealogy led to his discovery of the remarkable life of his great, great uncle, Michael Quinn. Extensive research in Ireland, England, and the United States has resulted in a highly authentic look at the times in which Michael Quinn lived. David Quinn resides in Prescott, Arizona.
The author is available for speaking engagements/book signings etc. Contact may be made through the website: Visit Website or by calling 928-442-0186 (Mountain Standard Time Zone). Discounted prices on hardcover and paperback editions at the website address above.
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