The Daghda

The Daghda is set in Ireland, Croatia, and Bosnia at the time of the Balkan genocide in the 1990's. Meaghan McGowan is a college history instructor in Dublin. Sensitized by her country's painful history, she arranges sabbatical leave in Zagreb to study the rationale, perception, and effect of neighbor genocides.
Once she is in Zagreb, the misery and despair of the Bosnian refugees bring into sharp focus her own tragic losses. Finding herself unable to maintain a sense of purpose in the face of this despair, she undertakes a risky journey to Sarajevo, which has been blockaded and under siege for years. Despite this, the multi-ethnic citizenry had remained committed to civilized behavior, even as they were subjected to artillery and snipers in the surrounding hills, and to starvation barely managed by airlifts from the outside world.
Meaghan returns to Dublin struggling with an altered view of reality that calls into question how to proceed with her life.

Kathleen McLaen has long been captivated and inspired by the courage and endurance of those who stand up for justice, even in the face of physical danger. She holds citizenship in the United States and in Ireland. A clear early childhood memory is that of listening to her father singing Irish songs of protest and of longing for a way of life lost to tyranny.
She came of age in the time of the civil rights movements, including feminism. Her first public resistance came as a college junior challenging her department heads' teaching that a wife was obligated to vote as her husband did. The department heads' extended fury did not move her, but she stood alone.
She married and spent the next two decades raising three sons and holding volunteer positions, before returning to college for a master's degree in counseling. She chose as clientele those who were marginalized by society and those with low incomes, and worked with them in agencies and private practice.
After the Dayton Accords were signed, she traveled to Zagreb and Sarajevo with a group of friends looking to support the survivors of the genocide.
She retired from practice when her husbands' health required a change in lifestyle and environment, and spent more than a decade processing her experience in the Balkans before she began writing the story.