Devoted to free Ireland from British dominance, Jeremiah Knox joined the Fenian Brotherhood in the late 1880s committed to remove the British by military insurrection. Realizing the limits of armed rebellion, he enrolled at Edinburg University to study law in the belief that political persuasion coupled with military action would be the most effective course to remove the oppressors. During a summer break in his studies he planned an ambush of a British munitions train.
Snitches in the Fenian Brotherhood revealed the plot to the British exposing Jeremiah and his fellow conspirators. The majority of the Fenian prisoners were sentenced to long jail terms. A first time offender, Jeremiah's sentence was immediate deportation, exiled to the United States where a family member had sponsored him. On arriving in Boston, Jeremiah learned that his family, opposed to his politics and in concert with the court in Dublin, had him dispatched to a stone quarry in Central Massachusetts. Alone and isolated in quiet region of the country, he was far away from his political connections in Ireland as well as from the Fenians active in cities along the East Coast.
There, sentenced to back-breaking labor cutting stones for graveyards, he knew he must find a new platform in life to replace his career in law. Angels on a Tombstone is a sweeping novel that traces one man's life from exile to the search for meaning and involvement in the New World. It tracks his evolution from stoic acceptance of his condition to a life full of opportunity, love and, inevitably, loss.
