- The Evening Herald After twenty years away, Jo Devereux flies home to Ireland for her mother's funeral -- the mother she hasn't spoken to for more than two decades. Every minute there reminds her of all the reasons she left and she has no desire to reacquaint herself with her home village. Or with Rory O'Donovan, the only man she ever loved, who still lives there. Her inheritance is a chest full of letters and journals, written by her grandmother and great-aunt. In them, Jo discovers a legacy of poison and hatred that has laid waste to the lives of four generations of women. It began with a simple yearning for Irish Freedom that exploded into a horrific and bloody civil war. Neighbor turned against neighbor, brother against brother, daughters against fathers, family against family-- leaving a legacy of lies, deceit, and murder. As Jo unearths the bitter, buried history she shares with Rory, it is clear their love was doomed from the start.