Kells: The Risin' of the Rebellion (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781517175450)

Helen Walsh Folsom was born in Kansas City, Kansas, on a beautiful snowy morning the day after All Hallows Eve on the second floor in the house of her great-grandmother, Lizzie Walsh Smith, Irish immigrant. The evening before had been so warm that the window was open, and in the morning there was a soft dusting of snow on the floor at the foot of the bed. When she left community-service work several years ago, Helen knew there was one thing she most definitely wanted to pursue: studying and writing about the Irish and Ireland. The more exhaustively she studied, the more enchanted she became with Ireland's legends, tales, and whimsical characters, as well as the isle's most prominent figure, Saint Patrick. Helen published her first book about Ireland, St. Patrick's Secrets: 101 Little-Known Truths and Tales of Ireland, in 2002. However, as charmed as she has been, Helen also understood the fight against injustices that the Irish people have had to endure for more than seven hundred years. It is not surprising that her next book was Ah, Those Irish Colleens!, published in 2003, which helps to explain the history of Ireland as seen from the women who affected it. With her book, Fianna: The Dark Web of the Brotherhood, Helen developed characters that, to her, represent the different types of Irish people--strong and knowledgeable, smart and stubborn, but always with a flair of independence. She also reflects this strongly in her book, Brandeen, In the Shadow of Captain Moonlight, where the heroine has to be independent, strong-willed, and brave to save her family and not reveal the true identity of Captain Moonlight even though it might mean her life! In Kells, The Risin' of the Rebellion, Helen takes her readers back to the Rebellion of 1798, one of the most tragic times in the Irish history where friends can be enemies and no one can be considered trustworthy.