Clon has ties to shortlisted historic novel

AN HISTORICAL novel with a West Cork link has been nominated for a prestigious prize.

MJ Twomey’s debut novel, Anything but Treason, is shortlisted for the Society for Army Historical Research Prize for Military Fiction.

Opening in the Crimean War, Anything but Treason is the tale of a young Anglo-Irish officer from Clonakilty, Samuel Kingston, who despairs when he faces court martial while avaricious aristocrats threaten his family for Samuel’s interference with an eviction during the famine. His only hope of salvation is accepting a commission with William Walker’s filibuster army in Nicaragua’s civil war.

Fighting through the freezing steppes of Crimea, the streets of London and Cork, and the scorching jungles of Central America, Samuel faces betrayal at every turn. When he discovers Walker’s post-war intentions, he must choose between justice and his family’s destruction. MJ, who grew up off College Rd, said: ‘The story of William Walker’s bold attempt to carve out an English-speaking empire in Central America intrigued me, and as I researched his plan to win the support of the southern slave states by bringing back slavery, I thought he’d make a formidable antagonist.’ Michael was born in Dublin and grew up in Cork before emigrating to California in 1986, and later moving to Costa Rica to expand his engineering business.