Ellen was born into a poor tenant farmer family before the cholera epidemic in 1831, in Cashel, Co Tipperary. This book follows her story through the landlord-tenant era of The Great Famine of the 1840's, the coffin ships that carried so many emigrants from Ireland, and life in America during the Californian Gold Rush and The American Civil War. There are insights into the historical events happening in Ireland at the time, along with a look at the social and economic background of what life was like for rich and poor alike in Ireland. Eamon Grogan is a retired teacher and lives in Cashel. Among the other books he has published are the crime-thrillers "Exiled by Evil" and "What might have been." He has also published a historical account of the life of Michael Doheny, who was involved in Daniel O Connell's Repeal Movement, The Young Irelander's Revolution of 1848, and was one of the founding members of The Fenian Movement in New York in 1855.