This is a story set against a late eighteenth and early nineteenth century background, telling how the evils of their time affected the lives of three generations of women. Kitty kennedy loses her lover before Carolan is...This is a story set against a late eighteenth and early nineteenth century background, telling how the evils of their time affected the lives of three generations of women. Kitty kennedy loses her lover before Carolan is born; katharine, Carolan's child, chooses what must inevitably be a life of danger; but it is Carolan, sensitive and proud, bold and reckless, who must suffer most deeply and who is the central figure around whom events revolve.