Peacerunner

Amazon image for Penn Rhodeen's Peacerunner

I am finally getting around to reading my friend Penn Rhodeen's 2016 book Peacerunner: The True Story of How an Ex-Congressman Helped End the Centuries of War in Ireland.  It's embarrassing that I didn't read it sooner, teacher of the Troubles that I am.

I first met Penn in the summer of 1987 when he gave me a ride to the island in Maine where both of our families have summer houses. I know it was 1987, because he was lamenting that his young son had become a Red Sox fan a year before, and when the famous ground ball passed between Bill Buckner's legs, Penn saw his son's face and felt that young Alex had chosen a team that would never win the Series, that would always disappoint. I argued that rooting for the underdog would build character (none of us could foresee 2004 at that time). Over the years, we have made that trip together several times, and so we have had many long conversations and listened to much music together, particularly Van Morrison and Counting Crows, which are the places where our musical tastes insersect.

Penn's book is about how Bruce Morrison--once a popular US Congressman from Connecticut--reinvented himself as a negotiator for Northern Irish peace after losing badly in the 1990 gubernatorial race in Connecticut. The book makes a convincing argument that it was Morrison's friendly relationship with both Bill Clinton and Irish-American publisher Niall O'Dowd that laid the groundwork for what became the Good Friday Agreement. 

Penn is a lawyer and a children's rights advocate by trade, and this is his first book (though he is presently hard at work on his second one). What makes the book so great are two elements: Penn's belief in the power of politics to resolve conflict, and his skillful command of narrative. Using novelistic techniques such as interrupted action--interspersing dramatic scenes with forays into prior history--he builds suspense about how this well known agreement came together and went down.

I haven't finished the book yet, so I will post again when I do, but I saw Penn the other night on the island, and he shared a few details that did not go into the book, but are interesting for me as I think about, and put the last planning details together for, our Northern Ireland trip. He spoke about the effect that it had for one culture to so dominate in the North for so long. Others told him that when Protestants went to prison, they came out well-muscled, but when Catholics went to prison, they came out well-educated. What one does with one's time can be influenced by what one is fighting for, and what that battle looks like. He also advised me to walk the length of the Falls and Shankill Roads if I have time. His observation was that the Falls--the Catholic/nationalist stronghold--provides beautiful hillside views of all of Belfast, while the Shankill--the Protestant/unionist stronghold on the other side of the Peace Walls--provides no view at all of the other side. It is walled off from the opposing view.