Ev'ry Irishman prepares himself to one day shake hands with Doom. Sudden death ain't no stranger to the Irish poor. Pap's day came January first, Eighteen-hundred an' twelve, my birthday, I'll be thankin' ye very much. I'll tell ye how it happened, 'though it pains me now as much as ever.' A quote of Hughie O'Neill in The Path To Glory: A Common Thread. ----------- Steve Mallon has written a compelling historic novel as big as the disparity between Old World and New. His sweeping story begins with hopeless prejudice and ends with two men locked in the brutal, life and death struggle for freedom. The Path To Glory: A Common Thread is thoroughly researched and historically accurate. A boy becomes a man when he travels an emotional journey and realizes his own place in the vulgarity of man's inhumanity toward his fellow men on the Florida frontier. This example of pure storytelling takes place just following the transfer of Florida's verdant territory from the weakening Spanish Crown to American's hungry for land at any cost. The transfer treaty guaranteed citizenship to all occupants - unless they were Negro or Seminole Indian. And now the saga of Hugh O'Neill, Florida frontiersman, begins with his new life in a new, but violent world, as violent as his dear sweet Ireland, the world he fled to escape and sorrowfully left behind. This is a story with building action and adventure on every page. An epic portrayal of a new breed of American who must survive against all odds.