The title refers to the hardship, suffering, hunger and death that began that year and continued for four more heartbreaking years. The title refers to the insensitivity and lack of control on English absentee landlords who took full advantage of the British government's policy to "let them do as they very well please," and they did. Often, an Irish family was evicted from their cottage without notice and for no apparant reason. The book's cover depicts a barran landscape. They are all gone, gone on the ships to Canada, to America to avoid, in many cases, starvation. They were evicted, their homes destroyed, the grounds cleared of rubble to convert pasture to farm land for crops. The British called it "clearance improvements." A land of plenty had not the care or compassion to provide adequate measures to insure the health and the satisfaction of their hunger, their own citizens. The barran landscape depicts the emptiness felt when a son or daughter left for a new life in a foreign land, never to be seen again.