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Reviews
Wexford People
11 November 2014
From her perspective on the far side of the Rockies, Kathleen is most enthralled by Republicanism, complete with capital R, drawn to those for whom liberty was not a negotiable commodity.
Echoes of Their Footsteps concentrates on the tough early years and she has found a willing collaborator in Patsy Flanagan, a Roscommon native living in the Ballywilliam area of County Wexford. Together, they have assembled a collection of hunger strikes, murders, chases and captures to illustrate the reality of the troubled times on which they train their spotlight. There is little room for editorialising, or for standing back to admire the broader view, as the Thorne/Flanagan duo concentrate instead on providing day by day examples of what occurred. The outline of each raid, each killing, each kidnapping, each execution, each burning, each of the hundreds atrocities and ambushes from which our State eventually emerged, is told with little ornamentation. Many command no more than a few lines but each comes with references back to the books, journals or newspapers which were the sources.
Roscommon People
31 October 2014
These books move beyond Roscommon. They paint a stark picture of what was happening across Ireland. The level of detail is remarkable. You are transported back to those tumultuous days. The approach is highly effective, most of all it is an invaluable record for present and future generations of how these grim events unfolded . . . "It is grim, sad, chilling even, laced with grief. It is also gripping, heroic, moving, and compulsive reading.”
Irish Genealogy
News 17 December 2014
The recent Dublin launch of two books by Kathleen Hegarty Thorne – Echoes of their footsteps: The Quest for Irish Freedom, 1913–1922, and Echoes of their footsteps: The Irish Civil War, 1922–1924 – may be of interest to Irish family historians.
With a strong emphasis on the individuals involved at the grass roots level, the books are based on some 22 years of research into the War of Independence and the Civil War which followed. Each has been extensively indexed and includes thousands of names of genealogical interest.
Roscommon Herald
16 October 2014
If you are looking for an accurate view of the activities in the entire country during the War for Independence and Civil War that followed, you will treasure the Echoes of Their Footsteps series. In Volume I and Volume II, the reader is treated to short, concise articles about various events from Dundalk to Bantry, from Newport, County Mayo, to Spencerstown, County Wexford.