Fierce Love is a timely and necessary full biography of this Cork-born theatre pioneer (1918–2006), who was the founder and director of Belfast’s Lyric Players Theatre from 1951–81. At the age of thirteen, stopping off in Dublin on the way to begin her first year at Loreto Secondary School in Navan, Mary O’Malley (neé Hickey) attended the Abbey Theatre. Later that year O’Malley would write and direct her first play, The Lost Princess. After she finished at Loreto, Mary moved with her mother to live near her brother, Gerard, in Dublin. In her spare time she attended productions at the Abbey and Peacock theatres and quickly became immersed in Dublin’s social and theatrical scenes, becoming a key member of the New Theatre Group, and joining countless societies such as the Irish Society for Intellectual Freedom.