Orphaned as a child, Cahal Kinsella returns from an industrial school in Letterfrack to the small farming village of Caherlo in West Galway, to live under the rule of his tyrannical grandfather. Cahal must learn to assert his individuality if he is to have any hope of freedom from his misery.

With humour and humanity, Walter Macken paints a haunting, memorable portrait of the hard life of subsistence farming, of loveless arranged marriages, and rebellion against suffocating social mores.

Written in 1952, this masterpiece is brought back to life in New Island's Modern Irish Classics series.