Book Description
Life is not good for twelve-year-old Irish American Ava when she is dragged back to Dublin by her mother after her parents messy divorce. She is bullied at her new school and her only friend is moody teenage neighbour Mal, who has secrets of his own.
But when Ava finds a sliver of an emerald and a bundle of old letters in the attic, she is plunged into a historical mystery linking the missing crown jewels of Tsarist Russia to the heart of Ireland s bloody civil war in 1922.
Who was the author of the letters young medical student Molly O Donovan? Why did her brother Jack the Cat smuggle the jewels from the United States? And did her football-mad cousin Dan survive running messages through the crossfire?
Through the eyes of Molly, Ava encounters the death of Michael Collins, deadly ambushes in Kerry and the tragic fate of former comrades.
As Ava learns about the bitter civil war, she is forced to confront the conflict in her own life. Can the journey into the past help her to learn the importance of reconciliation and new beginnings?