Deadly Dilemma

Dan Lynch and Kate should never have fallen in love, let alone get married. They met on Dan’s 24th birthday and they could never have predicted what was to lie ahead. He had faulty genes and Kate was a divorcee with two sons. Dan’s family does not approve of their relationship from the beginning. Dan’s father is a bully, and the coldness of Dan’s mother is uncanny and unimaginable. This was a family of clever manipulators without emotion or conscience; reeking in dysfunction while never missing a mass or a mission. Devout Catholicism and public perception was their most valued possession. Dan enters into a breakdown and Kate describes how their lives were destroyed by not only his illness but by the bullying from his family. Kate describes how Dan’s siblings sided with his parents to protect their own image and do all in their power to cover up his illness. They are tormented particularly by his sisters Eilish and Gilly, who fear others finding out about mental health issues in their family and their secrets falling out of the closet. The story tells the evil that can exist in a conflict over land, with an overhanging legacy of abuse and control. It tells of how a man becomes broken, his life destroyed by the hands of his own flesh and blood, and the price tag attached to the old father’s field. This man is obsessed with his land and wants Kate exiled from it at any cost . Vanity, greed, money, land, public perception, and the stigma attached to depression are still very much alive. This book is an insight into the road a person like Dan travels along with his wife who tries to help a man trapped in his suicidal state.