The hunger passed. The silence did not.
EAST CLARE, 1852.
People have begun to say the worst is over.
Máire Ó hAodha does not trust the saying. She trusts the soil, the weather, and the work of her own hands. On a narrow holding, with a child in her care, she has made a life from what hunger left behind.
The estate begins to take notice.
A man comes with questions. A name is entered in a ledger. The road outside the house is never quite empty now.
Nothing happens all at once.
Máire keeps to the field. The crop is coming on. The walls are still standing. She knows how much can be taken before anyone admits that anything has been lost.
