Saoirse - Mercedes Keyes 20th published work of written art. A tale told by a few, missing from the history books - part of British and American history - hushed to maintain a successful divide. This historical fact-fiction drama surrounds the hidden hell of the gentrified and enslaved Irish at the hands of Oliver Cromwell. This saga starts in the late 17th Century, with a son of the Irish Aristocracy - arrested for highwaymen activities. A rebel out to terrorize the English invading their lands - unaware of the crop he would reap from the seeds he sowed. He quickly learned how well his activities aided Cromwell's campaign against the inhabitants of Ireland.

Maximilian Euan O'Shaughnessy found himself shackled and shipped off to the new colonies - (the Americas) - a rich land where the aristocracy of Britain needed manpower to grow and develop the plantations of tobacco, hemp, and cotton. Free manpower. Manpower, that would not eat into their profits. The new world's first slaves - the Irish. Desperate to once again be free - he found that his hero - came in the form of a free, tiny, native girl many called Pe'hor - renamed Pheybey. Max followed her lead, as well as the lead of other natives, and joined other Irish men and women in learning the true definition of love, life, and the value of freedom. They learned to survive in the new land.

Pheybey, a mixed heritage native girl, is the daughter of a native tribal woman and a visiting Moore. Pheybey is defiant, innovative, can use herbs and plants to cure or fix most ailments. She is passionate, and determined to help her people, the Irish slaves, and Max, who has a determination to stay free and out of the binds and horrors of slavery.

References:
A New World of Labor - The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic
A Concise History of Ireland - by P.W. JOYCE
To Hell or Barbados - by Sean O'Callaghan
White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627 - 1715 - by Hilary McD. Beckles
White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America - Don Jordan & Michael Walsh
The Irish Slaves: Slavery indenture and contract labor among Irish Immigrants - by Rhatta Akamatsu
The Curse of Cromwell Vol. 25 No. 4 (July - Aug. 2017) pp. 24 - 28 5 pages - by John Donoghue