Beautiful, rebellious Bess Fitzmaurice is mesmerized by Dan McCaffrey, an American involved in the Fenian revolt against British tyranny when he appears in her family's house on May Eve 1865. Bess and her brother Michael get Dan to a ship and sail to America. But in America in 1865 Bess discovers among the Irish Fenians that money, power and patriotism are entangled in bewildering demoralizing ways. The Fenian invasion of Canada, and their goal to hold the English colony hostage for a Free Ireland, becomes a pawn in the power struggle between Washington and New York. When the American government double - crosses the Irish movement, forcing thousands of ex-Irish Civil War veterans to retreat back to the United States, acrimony engulfs the movement, resulting in Bess' brother Michael's murder. In despair, Bess quits the Fenians, finding love in the arms of former Union General Jonathan Stapleton. But their idyll is soon invaded by Dan McCaffrey, who forces her to choose between him and her new lover
- ISBN10 044681654X
- ISBN13 9780446816540
- Publish Date 1 February 1979
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 18 October 2003
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Little, Brown & Company
- Imprint Warner Books
- Format Paperback
- Pages 512
- Language English