The Exile

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Summary: Reader's Review of The Exile
Review: Richard Wheeler's The Exile is an exciting fast-paced historical novel chronicling the life of the Irish-American patriot, Thomas Francis Meagher. Tom Meagher arrives in New York City in 1852 after the British convicted him of being a leader of the Irish rebellion in 1848. The British send Meagher to the Australian penal colony where he eventually escapes to America.
Although the book is a novel, Richard Wheeler did extensive research to ensure his historical facts are correct. The only fiction in this book are the thoughts of the characters and the possible end of Meagher's life.
Richard Wheeler takes us from the shores of Australia to the sights and sounds of old New York. He relates what it must have been like for early immigrants who just reached this country and their trials and pitfalls in trying to make it here. Richard probes the loves of Meagher's life whether it is his love of Ireland or that of his first and second wives. We follow Tom Meagher as he develops a love for America and his complicated reasons for wanting to form the Irish Brigade during the Civil War. We follow Meagher into war and the intense fights at Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville.
Tom Meagher heads west to Montana Territory as acting Governor and is instrumental in establishing a territorial government for the people and by the people. Richard Wheeler brings us to Meagher's death and the strange circumstances and mystery surrounding his end.
Richard Wheeler tells Meagher's story in the first person and does a convincing job giving us Meagher's viewpoint, right or wrong, on the circumstances and ideas that helped form this country. I highly recommend this entertaining and enlightening book. As you read the story imagine yourself sitting at a table in a saloon with a pint of ale before you, a fiddle plays an Irish tune as Tom Meagher lights his pipe and begins to tell you his life story. This is what it is like to read The Exile.

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Summary: Meagher of the Sword
Review: This book reads like a ballad, each chapter an Irish lament for a brave man doomed by fate and history. The language scans like poetry, with an Irish lilt.

Irish rebels were a tough lot because they had to be, resisting oppression and starvation with few resources except will and spirit. Thomas Francis Meagher made enough trouble to be transported to the penal colonies in Australia but they didn't hold him long. The book begins as he escapes.

Meagher -- son of a gentleman, Lord Mayor of Waterford, M.P. -- lands in Boston and Washington where the signs say "no Irish need apply." Unable to find either a job or a political "position," he makes his living by lecturing until the Civil War gobbles him up.

It is as much a story of the Irish as of Meagher. Starved into leaving their green home, they came grieving to the new country to be rejected, crowded out, treated like beasts, and used as cannon fodder. The Green Brigade with its green flag, embroidered with a golden harp, went first into the worst of the battles. When their flag was shot to bits, Meagher taught them to wear a sprig of green boxwood in their hats, but often it was the soldiers who were also shot to bits.

Afterwards Meagher ends up in a place that in those days was not much more hospitable than Australia: Montana territory where he was acting governor in the days of gold strikes, vigilantes, and Indian massacres. Before he could find his footing, he was lost overboard in the night from a steamship tied up on the Missouri at Fort Benton. His body was never found. Killed by enemies or betrayed by friends? Or simply too drunk to keep from falling overboard?

Meagher of the Sword, they called him, and his statue today stands in front of the Montana capitol building where he sits a horse and brandishes a sword overhead. (The sculptor's name was Mulligan, don't ye know?) Is it a mistaken monument or was the man a deserving patriot? This book won't tell you, but it will give you plenty of evidence to turn over in your mind.

It's a story to be told by someone who can make the battles clear and sketch out the lines of contention among a dozen tangled parties. Wheeler can do this. The book is far beyond being a genre historical novel. Wheeler has done five-finger exercies long enough -- they pay off in this concerto.