You ask, ‘Can the dead speak?’ I answer, ‘Is this blood that runs in my veins, or ink? I ask that you read me. I ask that you hear me. See me. Touch me. Others have, and tasted my blood …’ So writes Jack Ireland, 14 year old English-born survivor of the horrors of capture by head hunters. In Voicing the Dead, internationally-awarded author Gary Crew revisits the astonishing story of nineteenth-century teenager Jack Ireland who survived – and lived to fight back through his ‘never say die’ determination and creativity.
