As Ireland sinks deeper into post neo-Liberal authoritarianism Eilish first looses her husband Larry who is a trade union official as he is 'disappeared' by the state clamping down on 'dissident' opnion. She then is sacked from her state paid job as a minor educational bureacrat. As difficulties mount and social clampdowns get imposed a rebel army is rumoured to be gathering in provinces (she is in Dublin). Elish's father lives on the other side of Dublin and his dementia is starting to get bad and it is difficult to get to him through checkpoints and curfews.

Her eldest son is given conscription papers for his 17th birthday when he was slated to go on to higher education. Elish arranges to hide him at a friends house while her sister in Canada finds a way to smuggle him out of the country. However after several weeks in hiding he disappears - presumed to have gone to join the freedom fighters in the south.

The civil war starts and conditions get worse. We travel with Elish down this nightmare road that so many people have experienced. The writing style enables us to experience it at an emotional level as one consequence piles on another. It ends, as so many refugee stories do, with the sea.