Three decades ago a chance meeting brought the author to the isolatedRoscommon cottage where his grandmother, Kate McCormack and five of hersiblings, over a century earlier, had bid tearful farewells to their family andsailed off into the west to new lives in America.This book follows their journey to a new land and the author's quest to cometo know two generations of a family divided by an ocean and nearly forgottenby time. Along the way, the dramatic history of late-19th and early-20thcentury Ireland and America comes alive as the McCormack family and theirneighbors struggle with the challenges and seize the opportunities presentedby those turbulent times.The book demonstrates how the "big picture" of history can be viewed throughthe individual portraits of those who make it and also addresses the difficultproblems facing those who undertake such a project - to rescue the history ofaverage people from obscurity by using the scattered remnants of their past.The McCormacks who made the long journey to America and the loved onesthey left at home are long dead, but family photos, letters, oral histories, publicand parochial records reveal the lives they lived.