Glenidan the backdrop to thrilling adventure set during Ireland’s War of Independence

A former primary school teacher and local historian has had her historical novel for children published by O’Brien Press.

Ann Murtagh’s ‘The Sound of Freedom’ will be launched in Eason Mullingar on Thursday February 20 at 6.30pm.

The story, which is set in Glenidan in Collinstown, where Ann has strong family ties, is geared towards 9- to 12-year-olds and is set in the spring of 1919, when Ireland’s War of Independence had just begun.

In a cottage in County Westmeath, 13-year-old Colm Conneely longs to join the local Volunteers, the ‘Rainbow Chasers’ who dream of an independent Ireland.

Caught up in republican fever, he smuggles guns, stands up to the RIC during a house raid and raises the tricolour on a lake island. But Colm is also chasing another rainbow — he dreams of a life in America working as a fiddle player and involved in the republican movement there.

The arrival in the area of spirited Belfast girl Alice McCluskey is a new development in Colm’s life. She speaks Irish, shares his love of Irish music and is also committed to the ‘cause’.

Will Colm stay in Ireland and join the Volunteers or will he fulfil his dream of working in America? A long-held family secret comes to light, rocks Colm’s world and shows him the way to go.

Ann Murtagh, who spent her first seven years living in The Bronx, New York, moved to Ireland with her parents, who bought a pub in Kells, where Ann lived until she moved to Kilkenny in 2002.

The mother of two, who married a Kilkenny man says the inspiration to write The Sound of Freedom came from being involved with designing school materials and teachers’ courses in relation to the 1916 centenary.

“This work made me appreciate the power and importance of story in treating this complex period of our history, so I decided to try my hand at writing a story set during the War of Independence,” she told the Westmeath Examiner.

“I settled on north Westmeath for the setting. As I had done a MA thesis years ago on the Barbavilla murder, I was familiar with sources for the area.

“Also, I’ve strong family ties with Collinstown; my mother, Chrissie Nolan, came from Glenidan and my father, Joe Murtagh, from Clondaliever. I am a first cousin of the late Christopher Nolan.”

The Sound of Freedom will be launched by Ann’s brother Bill Murtagh, who works with The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an American scientific agency within the United States Department of Commerce that focuses on the conditions of the oceans, major waterways, and the atmosphere.

“Marina Lynch and I were at school together in Eureka and happened to bump into each other at the Hinterland Festival last summer, thus a plan for the launch was hatched! My brother Bill Murtagh, who works for NOAA, is the guest speaker and everyone is welcome,” Ann says.