This great Irish epic reveals the story of the people of Ireland through the focal point of the island's capital city. The epic begins in pre-Christian Ireland during the reign of the fierce and powerful High Kings of Tara, with the tale of two lovers, the princely Conall and the ravishing Deirdre, whose travails echo the ancient Celtic legends of Cuchulainn. From the stirring beginnings, the author takes the reader on a graphically realised journey through the centuries. Through the interlocking stories of a powerfully imagined cast of characters - druids and chieftains, monks and smugglers, merchants and mercenaries, noblewomen, rebels and cowards - the reader sees Ireland through the lens of its greatest city.

The author vividly and movingly portrays the passions and struggles that shaped the major events in Irish history. The mission of St. Patrick; the coming of the Vikings, who founded the port of Dublin; the glories of the great nearby monastery of Glendalough, and the making of treasures like the Book of Kells; the extraordinary career of Brian Boru; the trickery of King Henry II which gave England its first foothold in medieval Ireland: all these set the stage for the great conflict between the English kings and the princes of Ireland and the disastrous Irish invasion of England which incurrred the wrath of King Henry VIII. The book, the first in a two-part Dublin epic, draws to a close in the Reformation, at a major turning point in Irish history, with the ceremonial burning of Ireland's most holy relics.