The Dead Republic

Book excerpt: After thirty years in America, Henry Smart returns to his native Ireland in this powerful and moving finale to his story. The Dead Republic opens in 1951 with Henry returning to Ireland for the first time since his escape in 1922. Henry, his leg severed in an accident with a railway boxcar, crawls into the Utah desert to die—only to be discovered by director John Ford, who recognizes a fellow Irish rebel—a boy volunteer at the GPO in 1916, a hitman for Michael Collins, a republican legend. He appoints Henry "IRA consultant" on his new film, The Quiet Man. With him are the stars of Ford's film, John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, and the famous director himself, "Pappy," who, in a series of intense, highly charged meetings tries to suck the soul out of Henry and turn it into Hollywood gold-dust. Ten years later Henry is in Dublin, working in Raheen as a school caretaker, loved by the boys, who call him "Hoppy Henry" on account of his wooden leg. When Henry is caught in a bomb blast, that wooden leg gets left behind. He soon finds himself a hero: the old IRA veteran who's lost his leg to a UVF bomb. Wheeled out by the Provos at funerals and rallies, Henry is to find he will have other uses too, when the peace process begins in deadly secrecy... In three brilliant novels, A Star Called Henry, Oh, Play That Thing and The Dead Republic, Roddy Doyle has told the whole history of Ireland in the twentieth century. And in the person of his hero, he has created one of the great characters of modern fiction.