When Kevin Barry Artt was born, his mother had to give birth to him in a convent in a small town, out of sight of people who would be scandalized that a baby had a Protestant dad and a Catholic mother.
If he’d died some years ago, he might have been buried in a cemetery in Ballymurphy that is said to have an underground wall, invisible from the surface, that divides Catholic dead from Protestant dead. The bigotry and absurdity of it seem hard to imagine. I think those days are over. But the need for truth and reconciliation has survived them.
Learn more about the troubles in ABOVE THE GROUND: A True Story of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, out now!
I hope this book can start a conversation about the governments putting some real muscle into helping people in the six counties to find those things. In the meantime, the country has brave men like Alan Miles, whose dad was killed in front of him and his mom, and who personally helped Artt get his conviction reversed because it was based on lies and deceit of police and prosecutors. And Peter Heathwood.
