Ryan’s Journey
It is 1939, the outbreak of World War Two, and ten year old Ryan Brannigan newly arrived from Ireland experiences the horrors and excitement of war. A rebellious lad in conflict with the parish priest, Father O’Donnell, his teachers, and his father, as well as the Church, he forms an uneasy relationship with Nadina Brown, a vulnerable, ultra-religious, highly sensitive, intelligent girl of the same age. Ryan’s father, Fergus, an armchair warrior of the IRA due to a wound sustained in the Easter Rising of 1916, strongly suspects the priest of abusing the girl, though she strenuously denies it.
Convinced that she is scared to tell the truth, he hurries round to the presbytery to find O’Donnell gone back to Ireland and a priest to replace him arriving the very next day. Angry and frustrated, Fergus rushes to the police station to demand action, but his complaints are contemptuously dismissed.
Ryan, confused over the turn of events has taken a thorough dislike towards Nadina. But soon he will discover the truth and his compassion for her and desire for revenge will know no bounds.
Publisher: FastPrint Publishing
Paperback ISBN: 9781784562571
Paperback: £7.99
John Barnes : Biography
John Barnes was born in Ipswich, Suffolk in 1930. Leaving school at seventeen, he was employed at the Borough Treasurers’ Office. At eighteen he was conscripted into the Army and billeted in Germany. After demobilisation he worked as a negotiator in an Estate Agents in Croydon, Surrey.
He was called to the ministry of the Church of England, studied theology at Queen’s College, Birmingham and was ordained priest in 1962, retiring in 1996. At the age of 78 he was accepted on the Master of Arts Creative Writing Course at Nottingham, gaining a merit.
It was a little late to launch into a new career, they said. However, after 34 years ‘vicaring’ and able to waffle fluently in the parish magazine, on retirement aged 65, I decided to write fiction.
I signed up to the Writers’ Bureau Correspondence Course, joined a local Writers’ Group and will receive my M.A. (Creative Writing) this month from Nottingham Trent University after a two year course.
