Just in time for both St. Patrick’s Day and the Centennial commemoration of the First World War. ‘Caitlin’ is the story of a young Irish officer caught up in two wars, one being waged against the Central Powers and a second, very personal one as he struggles to come to terms with who he is amid the chaos of world war and the rise of Irish independence.

This is not a gentle story. We are, after all, talking about the Great War, one that changed Western civilization and the very shape of its world. It is, as best I can make it, a snapshot of how things were and how someone no different than many of us responded to the times they lived in.

As always, I thank those who take the time to enjoy the story, for as Persephone likes to say;

HW Coyle

Thomas Mann wrote, “War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.” For young Collin Cassidy, an Irish Catholic medical student, volunteering in 1914 did nothing to solve the way the world viewed him or, for that matter, how he saw himself.

In the fall of 1917 the fears Lieutenant Collin Cassidy must deal with are unlike those of the men he commands. Though he shared the same hazards they did, Cassidy was unique, for his greatest enemy was not the Germans on the far side of no mans land or the wretched conditions his platoon endured during a tour in the trenches. Rather it was an appreciation that he was at war with himself, for behind the carefully crafted façade the young Irish officer hide behind was a soul out of sync with the physical presentation which his society judged him by, a part of him he knew as Caitlin.

Bit by bit the duel strain of war and the belief he could never live up to the expectations of others becomes too much to hold up under, leading to a collapse. At a psychiatric hospital established to treat ‘shell-shocked’ officers, Cassidy befriends Shannon Keane, a nursing sister who manages to see him for who and what he is. It is a friendship that proves invaluable, for when his return to duty in France proves to be short lived due to the destruction of his battalion in the spring of 1918, Cassidy gives himself over to his true nature, deserting the Army and returning to Ireland where Shannon helps him fashion a new life for himself as Caitlin.

It is a life that is not free of conflict as Irish nationalists engage in a struggle for their independence from Great Britain, one Shannon is very much a part of. Out of loyalty to her, Caitlin becomes involved in a brutal, bloody guerrilla war in which little mercy is shown by either side.