Publisher's Synopsis
Mariann.
She leaves her comfortable middle class home in Limerick to take up a teaching post in eighteen eighties Belfast to teach the daughters of linen weavers, all destined for the same mill. She makes friends, she makes mistakes but loves the job and her awakening awareness of the consequences of Ireland's struggle for independence. This is complicated to her amazement by the involvement on his death, of her brother and the knowledge that her family is under suspicion. She is now becoming fond of a weaver, the brother of one of her pupils but the relationship is abruptly halted. His family too is affected by the unrest in the city, and he is forced to leave suddenly.
Alone she finds she's pregnant and the fear of being incarcerated in the Magdalen laundry drives her with the help of an unlikely priest to take ship for England.
She finds in a small Lancashire mill town help and affection from a diverse group of people. She settles, she finds work in a local mill and has her son. She writes letters and short articles and sends them to northern publications. She has made a new life for herself but then the weaver finds her.
Marriage, the birth of one child and the death of another follow. Family life continues and she is happy until a recruitment representative from the growing linen industry in America offers better wages. She has her doubts but the weaver takes up the offer and leaves for Fall River Massachusetts to prepare a home for his family. She finds she is pregnant again, but with the money her husband sends regularly she manages, even beginning to earn from her journalism.
Then all letters from America stop. She tries to track him down but he has vanished without trace. Her grief must come second to her struggle to bring up her family.
Time passes, her children grow to adulthood and she is employed now by a local journal. Her brother in law, still embroiled in the Republican movement makes frequent trips to New York for meetings with Clan Na Gael, and on one of these trips he comes across a Fenian Colonel. The meeting is chilly as the Colonel tells the story of his disappearance and why he had no choice but to leave Fall River. Her brother in law chooses not tell her.
War is declared in Europe. Her son meanwhile secures work as a draughtsman in the shipyard in the north east and proud of his work on the magnificent Lusitania, but in early nineteen fifteen she is refitted to carry arms as well as passengers. One of the passengers on her final voyage is the Fenian Colonel.
Mariann is attending a family wedding in the south of Ireland when news erupts of the sinking of a huge ship off The old head of Kinsale. Little aid can be given and nine hundred people will drown, She hurries to cover this story for her Burnley publication. There is no sign of the Colonel among the bodies recovered .
