ONE FRENETIC SEASON

ONE FRENETIC SEASON – a short outline. Set during the Winter months of 1748 / 1749, the story involves the intrigues between three wealthy, Ulster families. Wendell Harper, sworn free and a burgess of Belfast town, is a former Scotsman who had emigrated to Ulster and made his fortune in the trading and export of linen, coal, meat, butter and other locally produced items. The Harper mansion is located on the southern outskirts of Belfast. It boasts six house staff and innumerable men working the fields. Cattle and horses are also bred. Alynia, his wife of Spanish descent, presented Wendell with two daughters, Ophelia and Myrna, when the family were well settled at the Ormeau mansion. Ophelia married badly, to a wealthy waster named Robert Monteath, the nephew of Laurel Monteath. Laurel inherited her brother’s estate at Windmill Hill, near Carrickfergus. She holds Roberts testament and is not bound to give it to him until he reaches forty and is responsibly settled with a wife and children. Ophelia, all love gone for her cheating and gambling husband, absconds with their children. In the dead of night, she leaves the children at her mother’s door and disappears into the Ulster country side. A series of misadventures befall her excepting that she meets Michael Kelly and they fall for each other. Her husband ‘borrows’ men and begins scouring the land for her. He removes the children back to Windmill Hill and Laurel Monteath. Laurel will inherit Robert’s testament if he fails to follow the directions of his late father. She, Laurel, sets out to keep from fulfilling the will’s conditions. Benjamin Gullen is a hedge teacher. He is the adoptive son of Lorcan Gullen (formerly Gulluric from Limerick’s Viking stock) and has two brothers who hate him (Ulric and Borcan). He is working, teaching children of all denominations, in South Tyrone when he meets Myrna Harper who is searching for Ophelia and a long lost aunt, Mercedes. They, also, begin a series of adventures, tied to the antics of Ulric Gullen and his ready sword. Ulric murders his own aunt and steals her gold coin. He goes on the run, bound for Londonderry and a ship for The America’s. Both protagonists and antagonists are in pursuit, many of those intent on gaining the reward offered for his capture by a wealthy merchant, Mandell Wyvern, who is working to his own agenda. The protagonist is one family (not one person), the Harpers and the antagonists are Laurel Monteath, Mandell Wyvern and his son, Tobias.