Book One
The Truth of Sheemore
An eighteenth-century Irish killing, a disputed verdict and a family story that refuses to stay buried.
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The Forgotten Histories · Book One
The Truth
of Sheemore
A forgotten life. A fatal morning. A verdict that may not have told the whole story.
The Truth of Sheemore is inspired by the surviving record of an eighteenth-century Irish murder trial. Court testimony, newspaper reports, family history and the landscape of County Leitrim reveal the lives caught in a tragedy that unfolded on Sheemore Hill in October 1786.
The novel looks beyond the verdict, reconstructing the people behind the official record and asking how much of the truth was ever heard.
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Review on GoodreadsM. C. Widdowson
Every family leaves traces.
Most are eventually forgotten.
Through letters, court records, photographs and family history, these novels reconstruct the lives that history left behind.
For more than thirty years I have explored my own family history and helped others uncover theirs, following forgotten lives through archives, letters, court records and old photographs.
The Forgotten Histories series grew from those discoveries. Each novel begins with real people, real places and surviving historical records. Where the record falls silent, the story is carefully reconstructed from the evidence that remains.
Historical fiction rooted in family history
The Forgotten Histories Series
Book Two • Coming Soon
The Theft of Truth
Letters, inheritance and a family record that may have been deliberately engineered.
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Book Three • In Preparation
The Silver Spoon
A family legacy carried through loss, migration and the objects that preserve what history forgets.