Redmond O'Hanlon is the best and least known of Irish highwaymen. Only seven years of his life are documented: from 1674, when he was proclaimed an outlaw, to 1681, when he died. The rest belongs in the realm of fiction: stories, folktales, songs, and ballads. This gives the novelist free rein to indulge his imagination. In Ó'Hanlon novelist Ron Duffy has added to the fiction that has collected round the name of O'Hanlon. In doing so has created a resourceful Robin-Hood figure, who, at the age of twenty, is swept up in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. The aim of the Rebellion is to win religious freedom and the return of lands confiscated from traditional chieftains, including the O'Hanlons. The Irish leadership is riven by mistrust and jealousy and lack the resources of the English and Scottish armies deployed against them. They go down to defeat by the disciplined forces of Oliver Cromwell. O'Hanlon flees to France and serves with distinction in both the French and Spanish armies at war in Flanders. Caught in dangerous situations, not all of them on the battlefield, and winning hearts as well as honours, O'Hanlon returns to Ireland. Expecting no restitution of his family's lands under the restored Charles II, O'Hanlon takes to the hills and woods of southern Ulster, the leader of a band of outlaws, famed as far as France for his daring exploits and his bold flaunting of attempts by the government in Ireland to capture him and rid the country of this most cunning and notorious challenge to their authority. This is Duffy's version of the O'Hanlon story. And who is to say that it didn't happen this way?
About the Author: Born Northern Ireland, Ron spent three years cycling round Eastern and Western Europe. He then obtained a BA in Geography from the Queen's University of Belfast, emigrated to Canada, took an MSc at the University of Calgary, and studied for his PhD at McGill University in Montreal. In Montreal he started a long career as a university lecturer in Geography. His writing career began as a freelance journalist. Then McGill-Queen's University Press published his book, The Road to Nunavut: The Progress of the Eastern Arctic Inuit since the Second World War, and Libros Libertad has recently published The Unquiet Land, the first novel in a Northern Irish trilogy. In addition he has self-published two novels The Janus Web and Crossed Lives, both available from Amazon as ebooks or paperbacks. Crossed Lives received an Honorable Mention at the 2012 New York Book Festival. His only play, Hearts and Minds, won a first prize in the Alberta Playwriting Competition.