Polly O'Brien is a girl of twelve who is desperately trying to save her father from the clutches of alcoholism. While attending Catholic school in the 1950s, she aspires to write and figure out life's mysteries without much guidance. Experiencing a frightening existence, she escapes by writing a book with the help of a ghost. Polly is visited by a spirit as she begins to pen a tale about the Irish Potato Famine. The apparition helps her to create by relating her own Famine story, and offers some advice. Dailearie O'Donovan, the visitation, tells of her adventures during the Famine in Ireland. By pirating and taking grain to county Mayo where their relatives previously died, she and her brothers hope to be the hand of God's bounty. This narrative describes coming of age before the era of information and the Internet, and the horrors of An Gorta Mór, The Great Hunger. It recounts the real difficulties that are often experienced by children and adults alike that have lived with someone suffering from alcoholism. Both the spirit and the very young author eventually find solutions to the devastating problems they both encounter

First published in 1867, this is a translation, with scholarly introduction and notes, of a valuable Middle Irish chronicle.

The first part of the work contains an account of the arrival of the Norsemen in Ireland, especially in the Munster district. The second part of the work is devoted to the history of the Dal Cais, or Munster chieftains, particularly of the hero Brian Boroimhe (Boru), King of Ireland, and his death in the Battle of Clontarf. The appendices contain a translation of the Book of Leinster, the chronology and genealogy of the kings of Munster and of Ireland during the Scandinavian invasions, a description of the battle of Clontarf, and genealogy of the Scandinavian chieftains named as leaders of the invasions of Ireland.--Cf. introd.