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Critical Praise

• "A grand ramble -- sometimes a stirring one -- through early 19th century Irish and Texas history, but above all one marked by faith, courage, and that questioning awareness of rights and wrongs that makes for growth of conscience."

  — Ruth McConnell, Young Adult Librarian, San Antonio Public Library

Reviews

• "an eminently satisfying work"

  Texas Books in Review

  Bryce Milligan's With the Wind, Kevin Dolan (is) a stirring yarn of Irish immigrants in Texas just prior to the 1836 Revolution. British persecution is making life in Ireland intolerable for Patrick Donohue, the last free landholder in County Wexford. He decides to emigrate to Texas, taking 12-year-old Kevin Dolan along as helper. Milligan relates Kevin's trek from Wexford to Refugio in careful detail, quietly filling in the historical background, yet never letting the details get in the way of his story. The book's plausible characters, varied action, and well-drawn frontier context make it an eminently satisfying work. It's a "Texas story," without question, yet one comes away from it with a better sense of the complexity of human history, and a greater appreciation for the ethnic diversity that constitutes Texas

• A "frank and non-ideological treatment of the moral problems of political and economic oppression"

  The San Antonio Express-NewsApril 26, 1987

  Bryce Milligan cleverly telescopes time back to pre-revolutionary Texas to recount the adventures of some hardy Irish immigrants in With the Wind, Kevin Dolan. . . . Milligan made a point of writing this, his first novel, for younger readers, though his narrative style is entertaining enough to engage parents as well as young adults, though on occasion a bit long-winded in a characteristically Celtic way.

  As Milligan notes in his prefatory remarks, the names of certain families and ships in the book are drawn from documentary records, and its "events" are derived from what is known historically of the beginnings of the Power Colony in the vicinity of Refugio, Texas, in 1834. His principal characters, Tom and Kevin Dolan, though, are entirely fictional. As characterizations of brawn and brain respectively, the two are rounded out through witty anecdotal incidents, from playing pranks on English soldiers to encountering Indians in Texas.

  Yet what distinguishes this first novel from the multitude of other stories for the "young adult" is its frank and non-ideological treatment of the moral problems of political and economic oppression. Milligan does not simply use the novel as a polemic against the English and the policies which impoverished their Irish subjects. Most remarkably, Milligan allows Kevin to contemplate the ironies of a Texas where " . . . Mexico was oppressing both the colonists and its own Mexican citizens. The Texans were oppressing the Indians whose land this was to begin with, and it seemed clear the United States was intent on killing every Indian who tried to hold onto a piece of land that a white man wanted.".

  Add to that Kevin's reluctance to join American Protestants in revolt against Catholic Mexico and you have a necessarily different characterization of what it meatn to be an early Texan colonist than has generally been offered to young readers.

• "A grand ramble — sometimes a stirring one — through early 19th century Irish and Texas history, but above all one marked by faith, courage, and that questioning awareness of rights and wrongs that makes for growth of conscience." —Ruth McConnell, Young Adult Librarian, San Antonio Public Library

  "Youth novel about Irish in Texas," San Antonio Express-News, April 26, 1987:

  Bryce Milligan cleverly telescopes time back to pre-revolutionary Texas to recount the adventures of some hardy Irish immigrants in With the Wind, Kevin Dolan.... Milligan made a point of writing this, his first novel, for younger readers, though his narrative style is entertaining enough to engage parents as well as young adults, though on occasion a bit long-winded in a characteristically Celtic way.

  As Milligan notes in his prefatory remarks, the names of certain families and ships in the book are drawn from documentary records, and its "events" are derived from what is known historically of the beginnings of the Power Colony in the vicinity of Refugio, Texas, in 1834. His principal characters, Tom and Kevin Dolan, though, are entirely fictional. As characterizations of brawn and brain respectively, the two are rounded out through witty anecdotal incidents, from playing pranks on English soldiers to encountering Indians in Texas.

  Yet what distinguishes this first novel from the multitude of other stories for the "young adult" is its frank and non-ideological treatment of the moral problems of political and economic oppression. Milligan does not simply use the novel as a polemic against the English and the policies which impoverished their Irish subjects. Most remarkably, Milligan allows Kevin to contemplate the ironies of a Texas where "...Mexico was oppressing both the colonists and its own Mexican citizens. The Texans were oppressing the Indians whose land this was to begin with, and it seemed clear the United States was intent on killing every Indian who tried to hold onto a piece of land that a white man wanted.".

  Add to that Kevin's reluctance to join American Protestants in revolt against Catholic Mexico and you have a necessarily different characterization of what it meatn to be an early Texan colonist than has generally been offered to young readers. —Ed Conroy, reviewer

  Review of With the Wind, Kevin Dolan, in Texas Books in Review

  Bryce Milligan's With the Wind, Kevin Dolan (is) a stirring yarn of Irish immigrants in Texas just prior to the 1836 Revolution. British persecution is making life in Ireland intolerable for Patrick Donohue, the last free landholder in County Wexford. He decides to emigrate to Texas, taking 12-year-old Kevin Dolan along as helper. Milligan relates Kevin's trek from Wexford to Refugio in careful detail, quietly filling in the historical background, yet never letting the details get in the way of his story. The book's plausible characters, varied action, and well-drawn frontier context make it an eminently satisfying work. It's a "Texas story," without question, yet one comes away from it with a better sense of the complexity of human history, and a greater appreciation for the ethnic diversity that constitutes Texas. — Fred Erisman, Ph.D., Texas Christian University, reviewer

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