Set against the backdrop of the Great Famine, this is the story of the triumph of one woman amidst Ireland's despair. It is August 1845. In Dublin's Botanic Gardens, Phytophora infestans is discovered for the first time. The bacteria was to result in the Great Famine, an event of holocaust proportions that affected every man, woman and child in Ireland. England's shame; Ireland's tragedy . Ellen O'Malley is one such victim. She loses her husband, is duped into going to Australia to lead a better life, leaving three of her beloved children behind. She travels aboard a coffin ship and arrives emaciated and ill with her new baby. But Ellen, a woman with an indomitable spirit, rises above her oppression and eventually returns to wreak revenge on those perpetrators of her misery.

Widowed by Ireland's Great Famine, Ellen Rua O'Malley flees her native land for Boston and the New World: with her are her two surviving children, Patrick and Mary, and the 'silent girl' whom Ellen has found wandering among the hordes of the dispossessed. In Boston awaits the man who loves her, Lavelle, and the hope and stability which she craves: but is shaking off the Old World, its customs, its language, the answer she believes it to be? Or is she destined to be caught between past and present, between two loves? When a man from her past reappers it seems that her own conflict can only lead to a fall from grace. Show More Show Less

From the author of the highly acclaimed 'The Whitest Flower' and its sequel 'The Element of Fire' comes a new novel just as vast in scope and powerful storytelling as its predecessors. Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, the powerful new novel from the author of the acclaimed The Whitest Flower and The Element of Fire poignantly explores forgiveness, longing, and the changing role of women set free by war from the protection of their men. Ellen O'Malley, together with her natural daughter Mary and adopted daughter Louisa, helps tend the wounds of the soldiers who have fallen in battle. In the killing fields of Virginia she toils, not realising that her estranged son, Patrick, and Lavelle, the husband she desperately seeks, are on opposing sides of the terrible conflict. Meanwhile, Lavelle and Ellen's former lover, Stephen joyce, likewise seek her out—and each other—with tragic repercussions. The inspiring story of Ellen's race against the ravages of war is a tale of great loves, impossible choices and the triumph of the human spirit against all odds.