1949

Ursula Halloran comes of age in the state created by revolution and civil war, where independence has not produced equal freedom for all its citizens. As conservative Catholic institutions shape education, employment, marriage and public morality, she resists the expectation that a woman’s ambitions must be confined to family and obedience.

Her life carries the series from the unsettled 1920s through Éamon de Valera’s Ireland and towards the declaration of the Republic in 1949. The novel examines how the ideals of national liberation harden into institutions, following a woman who measures political progress against the narrower choices permitted in daily life.