The townland of Kilroan in the 1970s is at risk of being trapped for ever in an earlier version of itself, a time when shell-shocked soldiers returned from the trenches, and convent orphans could be billeted as servants on poor farmers; a time when a glamorous Irish American finds her liberated ways mean flirting is flirting with death, and a chance meeting on a train means the postman's widow must face her past. Patrick O'Keeffe's Ireland is a precarious world, but it is also a place of natural beauty, of laughter, of family closeness, a place where stories can change lives. These four unforgettable novellas mark the emergence of an original and exciting new voice.