Book summary

This is the saga of an Irish family who face the hardships of famine, emigration, and political turmoil with an enduring spiritualist faith. In 1830's Ireland Mary is a young woman who's life is changed when a fairy sailor dies in her arms. Although she marries and moves her family to Ottawa to escape the famine, the fairy world never loosens its grip. Later in life she is called into the Canadian woods to die, abandoning her husband and two children. Her daughter Eileen carries on Mary's proclivity for impossible, otherworldly love, by falling for a fiery Irish patriot who is then caught up in an assassination plot. The whole tale is framed in the memories and legends as recalled by the 80-year-old Esther, Mary's great granddaughter.