Summer of '63 - Paperback

by Brian Leyden (Author)

Between the visits of President John F. Kennedy and the Beatles a teenage boy outgrows his childhood and a country comes of age. Ireland, 1963. Leo Rossiter, an asthmatic teenager in the grip of first love, is determined to prove his bravery to switchboard operator and Beatles fan Bernice Hickey. He sets out to trap the mystery wildcat rumoured to have chased schoolboy Francie Curran into the local river where he drowned. Then Captain Frank Welcome, an Irish Army crackshot back from the Congo, arrives amongst Leo's tight-lipped, coal mining community to track and kill the beast. The discovery of a confidential dossier, however, links the crackshot's pursuit of the wildcat with the manhunt for Republican subversives involved in a recent bank robbery. Leo and Bernice are drawn into a grown-up world of deception, tangled motives, and intrigues of the heart. It is a world more treacherous, complex and painful than Leo ever bargained for as he finally comes face to face with Francie Curran's killer.