Life sentences
(Book)

A portrait of life in Ireland follows sixteen-year-old Nancy Martin, the only member of her family to survive the Great Famine, as she embarks on an affair with a handsome gardener, setting off a devastating chain of events that continues to unfold over three generations.

The only member of her family to survive the effects of the Great Famine, Nancy Martin leaves the small island of Cape Clear and finds work in a grand house on the edge of Cork City. Her affair with gardener Michael Egan sparks a devastating chain of events. In 1920, Nancy's son Jer has lived through battles of his own as a soldier in the Great War. Now drunk in a jail cell, he struggles to piece together where he has come from, and who he wants to be. In the early 1980s, Jer's youngest child Nellie is nearing the end of her life in a council house, remembering the night when she and her family stole back something that was rightfully theirs. -- adapted from jacket