Story of an Irish family's struggles from Northern Ireland, Jane McPeck, in her twenties, traveling across the great Atlantic for a new life in New York, leaving her family, never to see them again, also leaving the heartbreak of English workhouses, poor Irish tenant farmer's rape, and injustice at the hands of English Lords. Experiencing the fury of the North Atlantic crossing, both poor English and Irish held together only by their faith and dream of getting to America. Come into the powerful Catholic Church and experience its enormous influence, the relationship between Lincoln and Bishop John Hughes, and the Irish of New York. Go through birth and death of Irish children, women seemingly always pregnant serving their church's rise to power becoming the largest religious denomination in America. Feel the sweat of Irish day laborers working for low wages, their disdain for Negros, willing to work for even less. Join the Union Army during which the Irish distinguish themselves for Abe, putting them on the American social map, at the same time coping with and in many case be defeated by the Irish curse, alcohol. Read and understand why an Irish newlywed would leave her wealthy husband, because of the death promise made to her mother.