Ellen O'Casey, an Irish Catholic immigrant, is struggling to support her ailing mother, her teenage daughter and herself. Washing other people's laundry in the day, and singing in bawdy pubs at night, Ellen is determined to make a better life for her family by saving enough for the passage to New York where the rest of her extended family have already emigrated. But Danny Donovan, a local gangster and the landlord of the pubs where Ellen sings, intends...

The author of the acclaimed 'Passion' tells the story of the Bronte sisters. In this panoramic novel we see with new insight the members of a close-knit family whose tight bonds are the instruments of both triumph and tragedy.