By Their Valour is available from Amazon.
Mary McArdle was part of an IRA gang involved in the murder of Mary Travers and served 14 years in prison.
Ann Travers struggles to understand why any woman would join a paramilitary group.
“I don’t understand any woman who joined a terrorist organisation with a view of taking human life,” she added.
“I couldn’t imagine it. As a mother I want to nurture life and I couldn’t imagine this.
“There was a woman involved in the murder of my sister. That woman is still alive today and she could easily tell my family who was involved in my sister’s murder and who my sister’s murderer was. She refuses to.
“I don’t understand that she justifies, still, going out to attempt to murder my father. I don’t understand as a woman, how she can do that.”
Emmet Doyle, the Londonderry-based author of By Their Valour, said women’s contribution had largely been forgotten.
“We can’t seek to fully understand the story of the Troubles without acknowledging and understanding the role of women,” he said. “Women as paramilitaries, the armed forces, in peacemaking and in politics. Not only have we forgotten women’s contribution to our history, we have also allowed individual
A woman involved in the murder of my sister is still alive today ... she refuses to name my sister’s murderer
women to be forgotten about.
“When we think of women in republicanism we think of Markiewicz and Farrell, when we think about loyalist women, who do we think of and who do we visualise when we think of women in the armed forces?”
Ms Travers, who campaigns for victims’ rights at the South East Fermanagh Foundation’s (SEFF) advocacy service, added: “The women I have met — former UDR and RUC women, and also civilians — are extremely strong, amazing women who have come through terrible trauma.”