History Talk: Myles Dungan's "The Red Branch"

Join Myles Dungan as he separates facts from his own inventions in The Red Branch.

In 1883, Irish republicans were bombing high-profile targets in London — and some of their dynamite was coming from San Francisco, 6,000 miles away. That explosive fact is the starting point of Myles Dungan’s The Red Branch, a mash-up of detective and espionage fiction set in “Irish” San Francisco.

Into this world steps Robert Emmet Orpen, a young London policeman sent undercover to infiltrate a Fenian front organization, only to have his cover blown before he even sees a cable car. Thrown into the city’s rough-and-tumble police force, Orpen must navigate crooked politicians, Irish-American turf wars, a bloody revenge killing, and the charms of an eccentric sergeant and a sharp-witted Californian medic.

Blending real 19th-century San Franciscans with an unforgettable rogues gallery of fictional villains, Dungan’s tale is part-thriller, part-history, and always laced with wry humor. Join him as he separates fact from invention in this riveting story of politics, crime, and survival in the City by the Bay.

About the Speaker

Myles Dungan is an Irish TV and Radio broadcaster and the author of almost twenty books on Irish and American history. He holds a PhD from Trinity College Dublin and received a Fulbright Award in 2006. The Red Branch is his first novel and he hopes it won't be his last.

Host or Publisher Mechanics' Institute