My BOOKS
The Power of the Stones
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The Power of the Stones explains a Wollongong family’s beginnings in colonial Australia. It is a story with a terrible past, growing from the events of Ireland’s Great Hunger, and the scourge of industrial madness which rapidly enveloped all that was once Scotland’s Midlothian rural landscape.
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A child of this Australian pathway, Stan Meehan, of whom doctors said, ‘was the finest specimen’ of the Wollongong recruits to enlist in World War One, marched off to that dreadful war. After his sudden death following the horrors of Pozieres, his elite 13th Battalion lay him to rest in rural France in the village of Vaux en Amienois in the December of 1916.
The Summoning Begins
“This lack of confidence in the authorities arises principally from the fact that every man knows that the last operations were grossly bungled by the general staff, and that Hamilton has led a series of armies into a series of cul-de-sacs. You would hardly believe the evidence with your own eyes at Suvla. You would refuse to believe that these men were really British soldiers. So badly shaken are they by their miserable defeats and surroundings, so physically affected are they by the lack of water and the monotony of salt beef and rice, that they show an atrophy of mind and body that is appalling.”
Keith Murdoch 1915
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The Summoning Begins tells the Gallipoli story of young men from a single Public School at Woonona in the city of Wollongong on the beautiful Illawarra coast of New South Wales.
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The author Dan Michael Meehan, himself a former student of this school, paints a graphic image of young men and wasted lives. He pulls no punches.
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It is not all doom and gloom as there is a theme here, a theme of bringing home the spirit of his great uncle Stan Meehan. He does this with some remarkable coincidences and to quote his Irish cousin Paula Halcrow, “It’s our ancestors that are playing a part in this story Our Dan, them and God Almighty Himself!”
Summoning the Stones
The Summoning of the Stones is a compelling true-life story with an ending so extraordinary, that it might just catch you unawares. Is it conceivable that the pulse of ancestral Celtic guidance can mingle with the forces of the ancient Australian Dreamtime?
The telling of The Summoning of the Stones was initially motivated by the reality of the shattered lives and ambitions, the unfulfilled promise of a young nation’s best, bravest and brightest. It soon became apparent their loss was entirely manipulated by a government’s belief in the dynasty of the British Empire. Once enlisted, the safety of young men was shown no regard and they were forced to face death over and over, directed by ominous and inept planners. Death was inevitable for many.
Despite the passing of 100 years, a truly remarkable spiritual return home to Country is contemplated for one of the fallen.
The author’s belief in family, his seduction into the world of ancestral Irish intervention and his own deep Australian beliefs.
Never say never.
Extraordinary fingers are at play in Summoning the Stones.
If you feel belongings that can have no possible scientific explanation, or in the power of ancestors to guide your actions, this is a story for you.
If you are able to tune into your earliest origins and if you can listen to the deep heartbeat of Country, the ancient rhythm of Australia, you too will be captured by this uplifting story.