Niall Williams and his wife Christine Breen are both writers, and she is also an artist. They met in Dublin as students at University College. Niall was from Dublin, and although Christine's parents were Irish, they had moved to America when she was five. After Christine returned to America, Niall joined her, and they were married in 1980. Five years later Christine inherited her ancestral home and land and they decided to return to Ireland to farm, write, and paint.

This book was written after their first year in the four-room cottage in West Clare where Chris's grandfather had been born. I had a hard time settling into this account at first. It moved slowly and didn't contain that much interest for me. About halfway through when they began to write about their neighbors and the traditional Irish life most in this rural area still lived, that changed. The music, the storytelling, the descriptions of the local people and how they became friends was what I was looking for. Chris had a relative living close by and they probably would have failed had she not been the support she assumed she should be. From telling them when to plant beans to telling them who to call to help harvest turf for winter fuel, she was an encyclopedia of traditional rural Irish life. Through the years Niall and Christine have had success at writing and she at painting. They still live on the farm, and there are three more books about their lives there. I look forward to reading them and other books they have written as well. ( )