JOHN YANG: Nearly 50 years ago in Belfast, Northern Ireland, a young mother hears a knock
at the door.
She's taken away, murdered, and buried on a remote beach.
A new book about this murder case set during the tragic conflict that engulfed Northern
Ireland from the '60s to the '90s shows that the wounds of the past are still very raw.
William Brangham has the latest installment of the "NewsHour" Bookshelf.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: When you're reading Patrick Radden Keefe's new book, you have to keep
reminding yourself, this is not fiction.
"Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland" begins with the famous
1972 abduction and murder of Jean McConville.
She was the widowed mother of 10 kids living in Belfast.
McConville was just one of the roughly 3,500 people who lost their lives in what's known
as the Troubles, the brutal decades-long sectarian conflict over control of Northern Ireland.
But "Say Nothing" is much more than a whodunit.
It's also the story of the lingering traumas of political violence and how the past just
refuses to stay in the past.
Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at "The New Yorker," and he joins me now.
Welcome.
PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE, Author, "Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern
Ireland": Thank you.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You write in the book how, when you were growing up and as a young adult,
you weren't really that concerned with your own Irish history and heritage.
So, I'm just curious, how did you come to this particular story?
PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE: In the course of my day job at "The New Yorker," in 2013, I read
an obituary in The New York Times of a woman named Dolours Price, who had been a member
of the IRA.
And she had lived this fascinating, dramatic life.
She came from an Iran Republican family, so she had the IRA on both sides of her family
going back for generations.
And she was the first woman to join the IRA as a really front-line soldier in the early
1970s.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: She was really like a radicalized teen.
PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE: Yes, very much so, and joined the IRA when she was just out of her
teens, along with her younger sister, and led a bombing campaign in London, went to
jail, was on hunger strike, and went toe to toe with Margaret Thatcher.
She very close with Gerry Adams, the IRA commander who became a politician.
And when he pivoted to the peace process, she fell out with him.
And so, for me, this seemed like an opportunity to look at the Troubles through the story
of a handful of characters.
One of them is Dolours Price.
Another other is Jean McConville, who you mentioned.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The Jean McConville case was obviously a famous case in Northern Ireland
for many, many years.
And her kids, the 10 children who were left behind when she was abducted, they are hugely
responsible in keeping her story alive, right?
PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE: Yes.
So, this is part of what was fascinating to me about the case, is, you have so many victims
of the Troubles.
And on some level, I could have written a book like this about any of the thousands
of cases in which people were killed.
Each one of those was a tragedy for their families.
But the Jean McConville case was so stark, because she was a mother of 10 and she was
a widow.
So, with one squeeze of the trigger, 10 children were orphaned.
And that tragedy kind of plays out through the generations.
There was a real culture of silence during the Troubles, a culture of fear and a tendency
not want anybody to ask too many questions or to talk about...
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This is what your title refers to.
PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE: The title of the book is "Say Nothing," which comes from a Seamus
Heaney poem and a line, whatever you say, say nothing, which is a phrase that he used
to kind of evoke that culture at the time.
And the McConville family ended up defying that culture of silence.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I'm not going to give away the ending of the book, of course, but you
have this remarkable moment where you -- maybe stumble is not the right word, but it sort
of feels like you stumble upon the identity of the killer.
What does that feel like, as a journalist, as a writer, to have that happen in the course
of your work?
PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE: It was a -- an intense experience.
I have never -- I have never had anything like that happen in years and years of reporting
for "The New Yorker."
I hadn't even really been looking for the identity of the killer.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: It doesn't seem like that was what you set out to do.
PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE: No.
Look, this was an old case.
Jean McConville was killed four years before I was born.
And part of what was so shocking to me -- I made seven trips over to Belfast during the
course of four years of reporting this book.
And I would go over there and I'd be asking questions about this crime that happened nearly
half-a-century ago.
And people would slam the door in my face.
It was the sense that it was still very dangerous and alive.
But I always assumed that the person who actually pulled the trigger was just a kind of anonymous
gunman, not somebody who was on my screen.
And then, quite by accident, very late in the game, I had been given two different clues
by two different people, and they fit together in an uncanny way.
And they pointed at somebody who was already a character in the book, somebody who I had
been aware of and the McConville children had been aware of, but nobody had realized
was linked to this terrible crime.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So the story that you're telling here -- you touched on Gerry Adams.
And he's such a central figure in this book.
He participated, as we say, in the peace process, and was a very important part of that process.
And you write how that peace process left so many people in Northern Ireland feeling
stranded, that victims felt like that they weren't getting justice, and perpetrators
who were engaged in these war crimes felt like, what was this all about?
PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE: So, for people like Dolours Price, here's somebody who did terrible,
terrible things.
She planted bombs in public places.
She targeted people for execution.
And the whole time, what she told herself was, I'm doing these things because we're
going to drive the British out of Ireland, and you will have a united Ireland.
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And that is success for us.
PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE: And that's success.
But it also is the ends that will justify all these terrible means that we have undertaken.
And what happened was that when Gerry Adams and others around him ended up crafting the
Good Friday Agreement, in which Irish Republicans and the IRA essentially said, we will tolerate
the idea that the British will continue to have dominion over Northern Ireland, that
felt to people like Dolours Price and others like a great betrayal, because there was this
sense that, I did all these things because I thought, one day, I would get to a point
where, in success, we could look back and say it was all worth it, but you have robbed
me of that justification.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The book is "Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern
Ireland."
Patrick Radden Keefe, thank you very much.
PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE: Thank you.