Bog Child

Dowd, Siobhan. Bog Child. 2008. 322p. ISBN 978-0-385-75169-8. Available at FIC DOW on the library shelves.

The civil war is raging in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestant, and Belfast is a war zone with British army troops fighting insurgents from the Irish Republican Army. Fergus McCann, a student in his senior year, discovers a body in the peat bog near the border with Ireland. Fergus’ life is complicated. His brother has been imprisoned for being a member of the IRA, and is involved in a hunger strike. His final exams are stressing him out. And now with the body of a dead child, Fergus doesn’t feel like he could handle anything else.

Returning to the site where he found the body, Fergus meets Cora O’Brien and her mother Felicity. Felicity is an archaeologist sent with an excavation team to study the place where the girl’s body was found. The bog child had a noose tied around her neck, and carbon dating indicates that she lived around 80 CE. A rocky relationship starts with Cora, while at the same time he is blackmailed into moving secret packages across the border for another kid with possible IRA connections.

Fergus’ life is complicated, and there are so many things that could go wrong as he prepares to leave his home. Will he make the right decisions, or, like Mel the bog child, will he end up dead?