Northern Ireland, 1975. Violence has erupted on the streets of Belfast.
After years as a sleepy, guerilla army, the IRA is clashing with Loyalist gangs and heavily armed British soldiers. But the Troubles have spilled beyond the small island: An ocean away, in the heart of Philadelphia’s Irish enclave, a teenage girl finds a letter in her mailbox. Inside is a bullet, and the message is clear: The next one is for you or your family.
As celebrated New York Times reporter Ali Watkins reveals in this exquisitely reported nonfiction thriller, the conflict in Northern Ireland might have gone very differently had it not been for a small, ragtag band of carpenters, family men, and fugitives in the United States. The Philadelphia Five, as they came to be known, supplied the Irish Republican Army at its moment of greatest need, bolstering the fight for a united Ireland but fueling the Troubles at an untold cost. This small group of Irish nationalists smuggled hundreds of rifles, rocket launchers, explosives, and armor-piercing bullets across the Atlantic Ocean and into Northern Ireland. Whether they were skimming money from innocuous-seeming charities, coolly slipping weapons into hidden compartments of vans and houses, or scouring local graveyards for the names of dead Irishmen to use on federal firearm forms, the gunrunners approached their mission—to unite Ireland under one flag, by any means necessary—with ruthless poise, even as European and American investigators closed in, members of their own movement began to turn on them, and bodies stacked up on all sides.
A gripping tale of crime, rebellion, and the hazy line between them, The Next One Is for You is the definitive account of America’s hand in the Troubles—a conflict whose resonance is still felt today, in the United States and Ireland alike.
“A harrowing epic of crime and betrayal, a surprising story of the Irish diaspora, a masterful work history".”
Praise for The Next One Is For You:
“[A] robust, ominous epic of blue-collar Americans running guns to the Irish Republican Army… With exactitude and compassion … Watkins ably captures the quirky personalities and gritty working-class backdrop of the American side, but she alternates it with the chilling narrative of how one smuggled rifle armed a young woman in Belfast in 1973… [An] engrossing, original fusion of true crime and geopolitics.”
―Kirkus (starred review)
“Written in the style of a political thriller, [The Next One Is for You] contains a treasure trove of primary research… [Watkins] doesn’t try to moralise or romanticise. War, she argues, is never a simple tale of heroes and villains.”
―The Irish Independent
“Riveting…The Next One Is for You will inevitably be compared with Patrick Radden Keefe’s nonfiction blockbuster about the Troubles, Say Nothing…C.J. Chivers’s globe-spanning history of the AK-47, The Gun, is another obvious antecedent….But its themes are arguably even more resonant in the current political moment.”
―The Washington Post
“Informative and well-researched.”
— The New York Times Book Review
“[The Next One Is For You] reveals the understudied role of Philadelphia’s Irish immigrants during the conflict…. Watkins’ formidable skills as a crime journalist are on full display.… Through their stories, Watkins shows how a revolutionary period is experienced by the individuals at its forefront.”
―Booklist
“New York Times journalist Watkins debuts with a rigorous account of America’s connection to Northern Ireland’s Troubles. . .Watkins paints arresting portraits of the nationalist ideologues who led the charge, and suspensefully recounts the years of FBI and ATF wiretaps and undercover operations that finally led to their arrest. . .Utilizing evidence and trial transcripts from both sides of the Atlantic, Watkins convincingly argues that the IRA would never have become as violent as it did without aid from American immigrants. This shines a harsh new light on an often-covered history.”
―Publishers Weekly