Stewart Binnie

Across the Water Stewart Binnie

Sometimes, failing to take sides is the worst thing you can do. It is Winter 1971 and Mary Bruce has been invited to Ulster to join her husband at his parents' home. She believes his father's illness to be the reason for her husband's frequent visits there. After two years of conflict, Ulster is on the brink of civil war, its hostile communities separated by the harassed troops of the British Army. In London, the Government looks in vain for a solution to a political crisis it barely understands and armed police guard public buildings following IRA threats to carry their campaign of violence across the water. In Belfast, Mary's visit becomes the stuff of nightmares and the intrigue and violence she encounters there follow her to London, in spite of her efforts to escape them. There, compromised by the activities she has witnessed in Ulster, she finds herself caught between the warring factions as she attempts to prevent a disaster on a scale hitherto unknown in the violent conflict. Stewart Binnie's previous novel, Call to Arms, is the story of a Quaker family in the Great War, for whom the introduction of military conscription in January, 1916 is the beginning of a struggle to reconcile its personal convictions with its obligations to King and Country.