Tribal Bonds

In the fifth century, St. Patrick used the three-leaf shamrock to demonstrate the concept of the Holy Trinity to illiterate Irish peasants. At the start of the twentieth century, in the face of persistent discrimination and bigotry, Irish immigrants in America were forming an unofficial but invaluable trinity of their own. This "shamrock" of politics, labor unions and the Catholic Church created the public bond that the Irish used, along with their fierce loyalty to each other, to elevate themselves from the bottom rungs of society. TRIBAL BONDS illuminates this struggle by following three generations of the O'Toole family in St Louis, MO between 1922 and 1994. Siblings Michael and Margaret Mary O'Toole were "Irish twins" as the saying goes, born less than a year apart in the early 1950's. They were well aware of the sacrifices their parents and grandparents endured to provide them with a life of freedom and opportunity, but no longer saw the need for their forebears' rigid, clannish behavior. Their older relatives were devout, prayerful Catholics who had no qualms about using expletive laced outbursts or seeking revenge when they felt threatened. Michael and Margaret Mary studied this dichotomy with some amusement, until their own lives were turned upside down by debilitating trauma and pain inflicted upon them from a most unlikely source. They could never have predicted how this fierce Irish loyalty and tribal bond would come full circle to help them salvage their own broken spirits and dreams.