Weaving meticulous research with imagination, Monica Weber Babcock gives voice to her great-great-grandparents Samuel and Julia, survivors of the Irish Potato Famine who emigrated to the United States in the 1850s. As they recount their lives through alternating chapters, they draw us into their turbulent world shaped by hunger, hope, poverty, love, sickness, and haunting memories of Civil War battlefields. Finally, Samuel and Julia each describe how, in struggling to care for their family, they make desperate decisions leading to unimagined consequences.