In IRELAND AWAKENING, Edward Rutherfurd, working closely with leading Irish historians, tells the story of the O'Byrne, MacGowan, Doyle, Walsh and Tidy families, together with the Catholic Smiths, Presbyterian Laws and Budges, down the turbulent centuries of Cromwell, the Ascendancy, and the Famine to the Easter Rising and the Irish Free State.

In the days of England's colonising plantations, the ranting Puritan preacher Doctor Pincher and his land-hungry nephew Barnaby Budge oppose the passionate piety of the Walshes. Against the background of the Irish Confederation, the coming of Cromwell, the massacre of Drogheda, and the Battle of the Boyne, the middle-aged adultery of Margaret Smith with the Irish chieftain Brian O'Byrne leads to many consequences. During the English Ascendancy, through the elegant world of Georgian Dublin, the literary times of Swift and Sheridan, and the political drama of Grattan's famous Parliament, rich Walshes, poor hedge schoolmasters, and Dublin shopkeepers try to protect their position and their faith - until all compromise breaks down with the rebellion of Wolfe Tone in 1798 - the Year of the French - and the tragedy of Emmet's Rising.

We follow Tidy the Quaker, Smith the Catholic, Dudley Doyle the economist, and many others through the rise and fall of O'Connell and of Parnell, and during the day-by-day misery of the Famine, where a poor girl tries to save her family. We reach the exciting but dangerous world of the Celtic revival of WB Yeats, the growth of Sinn Fein in the streets of James Joyce's Dublin, and the remarkable story of the Women of the Easter Rising. (From the Author's website)