CURSE of the CONCHOBAR – A Prequel to the Adirondack Spirit Series by David Fitz-Gerald – U.S. Historical Fiction, Family Saga Fiction, Ghost Fiction

Conchobar wakes, barely alive and in a world he does not know.

When he’s found by the tribes who call this land home, he’ll become caught by the ties of family, violence, and love, none of which he’s ready to face.

Conchobar lives in the house of Spits Teeth, the patriarch of his adoptive family. He struggles to learn their way of life, still tied by memory and longing to his home at the monastery of Skellig Michael. But he must learn to hunt, fish, and fight if he wants to survive and belong.

Despite his struggles and the language barrier itself, Conchobar begins to care for the new family around him. But an endless cycle of battle and bloodshed roars between his new tribe and their neighbors.  Soon, events will rise and test his peaceful nature and put his beloved family in great peril. Beyond the threat of warclubs and arrows, a dark curse threatens to swallow all the good that he might find in this new world.

Conchobar’s life amongst the tribe of Spits Teeth is defined by his distance from them, his sense of being a fish out of water.

No matter how much he learns to live as the people around him do, he never quite understands them, always somehow on the outside looking in or yearning for his past life. He spends much of his time in his own head, musing on the world around him as he faces new and strange things. The world is interesting and alive through his eyes. The dynamic villagers show their place in the world with every word and action; as Conchobar grows close to them, they show more of who they are, what they want, and what they fear. Conchobar offers his love to his new family and his grave concern as he realizes the danger they’re in.

Fitz-Gerald takes time and great care with Conchobar, sitting with his thoughts and sorrows and joys.

His growing sense of doom becomes one with the story, as cruel twists of fate begin to unfold upon his new family. But between this dread, the people of the village open up as Conchobar learns their language, and the action of their battles and hunts together flows smoothly across the page. Their material world slowly mingles with the supernatural and mystical, spurred by Conchobar’s strange place between the two. But he doesn’t have the time to unravel his curse and his connection to the natural world, as the longer he stays in the midst of battle, the more personal it becomes to him.

The Curse of Conchobar is a tale of violence begetting violence, of the perseverance of faith and hope in the face of grief and fear. Conchobar’s dreamlike connection to nature becomes a religious experience, showing him wonders of the world, cut off by the approach of a people who never needed to be enemies.

Throughout the story, Conchobar’s voice remains strong. Fitz-Gerald breathes life into his Spits Teeth characters. In love, loss, and anger, the emotion is palpable to the reader and will remain long after the book is read. The Curse of the Conchobar – A Prequel to the Adirondack Spirit Series scratches the itch for rich character exploration, historical fiction in a time and place often underrepresented, and a love story marked by tragedy and transcendence. In other words, Fitz-Gerald delivers a worthy prequel to the Adirondack Spirit Series.