Dr. Megan McGrath and her niece Ann come to Ireland, at her aunt's request, to treat an infertile couple, or so she believes. Catholic Mary Curry is promised that her oldest son Sean will be released from prison if her niece, Megan, will come from America to the New Lodge area of Belfast to treat cancer patient Garrett Redmond, an ailing Unionist terrorist. Megan and Ann quickly find themselves caught in animosity raging throughout Northern Ireland. Megan is abducted and compelled into helping the very greatly diseased Redmond.

Before his imprisonment, Sean has seen the deaths of his father and sister at the hands of the Protestants. While a prisoner, Sean determines that Redmond was mixed up in the slayings of his family. Complicating matters, Ann is developing a relationship with the Redmond grandson.

Between the covers of New Lodge Affair, the reader is carried along in the hostility between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland from 1947-1991. The lives of two families: the Catholic Currys and Protestant Redmonds are presented in intense detail during Northern Ireland's most deadly period by writer Russo. Intertwined through rancor and violence, the lives of these two families are presented in a suspenseful, fast paced narrative filled with passion, horror and machination. By focusing attention on the lives of the families, Russo delineates more the heartache experienced as the characters lose more than they gain from the enmity and discrimination rampant in the area.

Filled with a good bit of the poignancy found in Eric Balkan's City of Tears, and the attention to rich detail employed by Paul Clayton in Calling Crow, Russo's New Lodge Affair is an entertaining read that will keep the reader engrossed from the opening pages right on to the last paragraph. —Molly Martin, Scribes World Reviews

New Lodge Affair successfully demonstrates the destruction of a country because of religious prejudice. Russo's brisk prose creates a startling and informative message, bringing history to life with vividness, as bombings and other acts of violence undercut the effort of those who would prefer non-violent solutions.—Cindy Penn, Midwest Book Reviews