Book Seven: A Nation Is Born, 1919 to 1930

The years, 1919 to 1930

Delia's younger sister, Nora Óg Gallagher, named for their grandmother, takes up the pen. She writes to Sean Ryan and, as he ages, more and more to his young son James, the boy who will carry the family's last Book.

The War of Independence. In January 1919 the first Dáil met in Dublin and declared an Irish parliament, and the war began. From March 1920 the Black and Tans, sent to break the resistance, brought a hard and frightening year to Mayo and the whole country. Bloody Sunday in November 1920 marked its worst.

The Truce and the Treaty. A truce in July 1921 brought tentative relief, and the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed that December. It gave Ireland a Free State, but it split the country over the oath and the border, and the argument came right to the family's fireside.

The Civil War. From June 1922 to May 1923, former comrades fought one another. Neighbours took opposite sides, and the wounds ran deep and quiet for years after. Then the guns stopped, and the slow work of building an ordinary country began.

The family in these years

Nora Óg writes through all of it with a steady hand, refusing to let the letters take a side they cannot take back. She carries the raids and the reprisals, the Treaty debated late at the fireside, the grief of a war between friends, and then the small returns of normal life. Across the water, an old man and his son read the birth of the country their family left, in letters from the ones who stayed.

Moments from the twelve letters

• January 1919. The first Dáil meeting in Dublin, and the sense that something has genuinely begun.
• March 1920. The Black and Tans arriving in Mayo, and a fear that settles over the lanes.
• December 1921. The Treaty signed, and its terms turned over and over at the fireside.
• June 1922. The Civil War begun, and the hardest sentence Nora Óg has had to write, that neighbours are on opposite sides.

Your county in Book Seven

The O'Donnells are the Mayo edition. The War of Independence and the Civil War were fought county by county, so each county's edition follows its own columns, ambushes and reprisals as a nation is born. See how the county personalisation works.