Seek the Fair Land

Seek the Fair Land is a novel by Irish author Walter Macken, first published by Macmillan and Company in 1959.

Dominick Macmahon's wife is killed during the Siege of Drogheda, in County Louth and after the ensuing massacre of the town's inhabitants he flees to the west of Ireland with his young son and daughter and a wounded priest, Father Sebastian.

[1] After two years of barely surviving Cromwell's marauding soldiers who are in search of peasants to sell as slaves, the group make it to the wild, mountainous and beautiful province of Connaught in the west of Ireland.

The ‘fair land’ sought by Macmahon seems as remote as ever, unless Murdoc and his clan can find some means of resisting the invading forces.

On its release the New York Herald Tribune described the novel as ‘action-packed entertainment…an explosive segment of history, filled with contagious emotion.’ [3] The Times Literary Supplement said of it: ‘It is an adventure story that is both exciting and moving.’ [4] Kirkus Reviews described the novel as ‘an adventure story against a little known period and background.