Bog Child (review)

It’s Ireland in the 1980s, and each trip across the border between Fergus McCann’s Northern Irish village and the south involves some risk. When Fergus and Uncle Tally make an early morning jaunt to spirit off a bit of peat for sale back in the village, they unearth a body that appears to be that of a child, possibly an ancient child. A not entirely truthful report to the authorities brings in the police and, shortly thereafter, archaeologists, and the McCanns find themselves renting rooms to an archaeologist and her teenage daughter. Fergus would like to simply prepare for his A levels and follow the progress of the excavation (and flirtatious Cora), but the Troubles have burdened his family with grief. Fergus’ brother is in jail on a hunger strike, and his brother’s old pal has enlisted, then blackmailed, Fergus into smuggling packages across the border on his morning runs. Dowd handles multiple plot strands with ease, interweaving such weighty issues as family and ethnic loyalty and the ethics of political dissent with the more mundane problems of cross-cultural friendship and the need to separate from family to pursue opportunity. Fergus’ dreams about “bog child” Mel offer a window into her possible past but never quite cross into a haunting, and a deft plot twist involving Fergus’s smuggling further draws the elements of political thriller into the believable realm of teen experience. American readers in need of more background to absorb the political details of the novel will need to pursue research on their own, but a brief note on the IRA and the 1981 hunger strike provides some context with which to start.