My Brother's Keeper

1955, NYC: A young black boy's mother dies, and he fends for himself as he grows up with a negligent aunt. 1970, Londonderry, Northern Ireland: A bomb explodes, killing everyone in the pub. 1980's, USA: A highly-successful Midwestern businessman becomes jobless and ends up working for the FBI. 1995, Cambridge, MA: An American novelist begins to write a novel about a small local group that is secretly aiding the IRA. Joining in her new neighbor's Scottish dance group, she finds herself caught up in an actual group of IRA collaborators that the FBI is watching. She then must try to prove her own innocence while also trying to help thwart the collaborators' plans for bombings in England. It is one of life's ironies that people from very different places and circumstances can come to have a profound effect on one another. Through intense personal relationships, this book explores our various perceptions of, and participation in, right and wrong, and our inevitable entanglement in human emotion.