Blue Star Rising - Ryan Keith

Blue Star Rising, a literary novel set in the autumn of 1993, tells the story of Richard (Dickie) Boyle, a member of the Dublin Gaelic Football Team (who play in blue jerseys). As a child, Richard was fostered from his birth family in the inner city to a middle class family in the suburbs. His foster parents have recently died and left him with property and money. Now just out of college, he starts a temporary teaching job in a Sheltered Workshop where he meets Dee, a research student. It is a whirlwind journey of young love set against a background of life threatening violence, social imbalance, family opposition, and the strains that superstar status brings as their relationship is given the full media treatment.

The  journey of self-discovery takes him back to his birth family in Dublin’s flatland, and their involvement with drugs and paramilitary violence, continues through France and Australia, until returning to Dublin, he is forced to confront his past, a past that threatens to destroy all that he holds dear.