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Sat 05 May 2007Sites of endless ambiguityFictionWhen wars end, the real trouble begins. The slave-holding American South lost the civil war but the psychic scars left by racism were carried, by white people as well as black, for more than a century after Abolition. A colonial power may be expelled by a movement of national liberation, but habits of self-doubt may persist long after the occupier has gone.Likewise, a freedom-fighter may escape the hangman's noose and the life of the convict in Tasmania, finding fame and fortune in the Land of the Free, only to discover that his early sufferings are not so easily transcended. In the end, he may in fact be sabotaged by his very virtues. Such a figure is James O'Keeffe, hero and anti-hero of Joseph O'Connor's latest novel, whose title indicates not just the name of the town in which much of the action is set but also these bitter, underlying truths. O'Keeffe, known as "the Blade" (in much the same way that Thomas Francis Meagher was called "the Sword") is at once brave Irish rebel and tawdry showman, fearless abolitionist and sometimes racist, harsh dispenser of Reconstruction Law and sensitive soul having a very hard time of it. All this against a background of anarchy and improvisation in the West of 1865-1866.