On Writing The Sandstone City
Back in 2019, when my initial thoughts about the writing of Sandstone began to simmer, there were a number of ideas I was keen to explore. First of all, I really wanted to anchor the story in some way around Irish involvement in the Spanish Civil War, particularly around the lesser known, shelved history of the way in which Irish men divided their support for opposite sides of the war effort. It was the concept of a fractured community, of a fractured self, moulded by the burden of secrets and history that particularly drew me in. Place, too, was significant in those very early stages, as a way to interconnect history and cultures. I wanted the novel to fold around two cities very close to my heart – Belfast, where I grew up and where the importance of family and community was ever-present; and Salamanca, where I studied as an Erasmus student for a year and where I first felt the most complete version of myself.
While studying Spanish and Spanish history, I heard much about the Irish volunteers who joined Frank Ryan to support the Republican effort. However, what I didn’t know then was that the majority of men who left Ireland to participate in Spain’s Civil War did so under the leadership of Eoin O’Duffy to align with the Nationalist cause. These recruits, blessed and championed by the Catholic church, saw Franco as a defender of Catholicism and tradition, and the war as a Holy Crusade, a fight for Christianity against Communism. With the discovery that Salamanca was the Nationalist military headquarters during the Civil War, the narrative arc of the story began to gain some rough shape.
In the first draft of the novel, the Spanish Civil War was something buried in the past, a portion of history associated with the dead grandfather of the main protagonist, Sarah, which would resurrect itself in discovered letters and diaries. I never planned for Sarah’s grandfather, Michael Doherty, to feature as a principal character in the story; rather, as one remembered through Sarah’s own memories and the writings he left behind. However, once the first draft was underway, the voice of Michael Doherty was one that wouldn’t leave me alone; he was always hanging around in my head, talking to me, telling me off. I thought to myself: I can’t make a dead man a character, can I? And then I thought: let’s give the man a chance.
And so I brought Michael Doherty to life as a dead person, existing in an in-between space for forty days: forty days to discover the trauma that forced his granddaughter to leave Salamanca, while having to confront his own buried past. Once Michael began to speak in the first person, I knew I had to start the novel with him. And once his reason for staying around for forty days was established, I had to set the boundaries. I didn’t want Sandstone to be a traditional ghost story, nor for Michael to be hovering on Sarah’s shoulder, driving her decisions and choices. I was keen to create some distance between grandfather and granddaughter - I wanted Sarah to assert her agency.
It was also important to me to create a community of voices, inspired by the working-class men and women I’d been surrounded by when growing up in Belfast. I’ve always been fascinated by the closeness of families and communities, how people look out for each other; and at the same time, how the closest bonds can be fractured and broken by differences in faith, in values, in the way we individually see the world.
What did I enjoy most about writing Sandstone? It was – and continues to be in whatever I’m writing – the way in which characters reach a certain point and then take you off in a number of different, unanticipated directions. This is when the story fully breathes for me, when I feel that both the characters and myself collectively say: we’re ready.