County Tipperary, Ireland, in 1868 is a green and glorious land, a land especially suited to raising fine horses. It is a land of legend, of castles, grand manor houses, small mud cottages and an atmosphere of desperation. The Great Irish Famine of 1848 and the fever that followed has killed over a million of Ireland's people and broken the hearts of its survivors. Harsh new laws, called "penal laws" imposed by England without Irish representation are driving hundreds of thousands more to emigrate to North America and Australia. This is the land that Maggie Shannon, her grandfather and brother love and call home.

To find out more about the potato famine and the penal laws, read The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham-Smith, first published by Hamish Hamilton in 1962.

To read about Irish Emigration, search the WEB. A fine new book about the Irish experience in America is Finding My Irish by Sharon Shea Brossard.

For more books about Ireland, check out www.ReadIreland.com.