Derry, Northern Ireland, 1966
Partitioned from Ireland since 1921 and dominated by a Protestant majority, the Catholic minority has grown weary of the casual discrimination against it and has begun a push for equal rights. One- man-one-vote. Decent housing. Good jobs. The most basic of requests. Yet these are still too much to accept, for those in power. Protests, confrontations, and demonstrations erupt, growing more and more dangerous and violent.
Caught in the middle of it all is Brendan Kinsella, a Catholic boy who is thought of as ... odd. The story begins with the murder of his father just days after his tenth birthday, but Brendan is not sorry the man is dead; he was a vicious drunk who kept the family in extreme poverty, so his absence will be better for them.
However, the man was killed by a pair of Protestants, which makes him a martyr to Ireland and sets Brendan's mother, Bernadette, on an expanding path to Irish Nationalism. She drags his older brother, Eamonn, with her ... but Brendan is reluctant to fall in line.
The third of her six children, he is quiet and observant, with an innate wariness and skepticism, and prefers to go his own way, even though that can lead him into trouble, on occasion. Bernadette constantly berates him as simple-minded, despite his knack for repairing just about anything, and seems unwilling to accept he just wants to form his own opinions.
Through the next six years, despite his efforts to remain apart from the growing turmoil, Brendan gets caught up in the countless civil rights demonstrations in Derry; the Battle of Bogside, where Catholics forced the Protestant Police Force out of their neighborhood; the arrival of British troops to separate the warring factions; internment without trial; and Bloody Sunday, when Paratroopers massacred Catholic marchers.
Mingled into this is Brendan's budding relationship with Joanna, a Protestant girl from a well-off family. A relationship that must be kept secret to prevent any reprisals. She is pretty, fun to be around, has a life of relative ease, and is certain she is bound for university. She helps him see there is more to this world than hate and distrust, that his hopes, wishes and dreams could become reality, and they might still find a place of safety, even as their world careens towards chaos.