This moving coming-of-age narrative transports the reader to a quiet way of life, lost and gone forever. Betrayal, tragedy and perseverance lay in store for John Joe Baxter, growing up in Ireland during the 1940s and 50s. When his widowed mother dies in 1947, a conniving uncle tears the family apart, sending John Joe's two older sisters to a convent and the remaining four children to live with different distant relative, but optimistic young John Joe longs to return to his family farm to work the fields on the beautiful mountains of Munlough.