Only the River Runs Free

It was four o'clock on the afternoon of December twenty-fourth, 1841, in the village of Ballynockanor, County of Galway, Province of Connaught, Ireland. It was after mass on the first day of Advent that the old woman, Mad Molly Fahey, had told Father O'Bannon (as well as every farmer, farmer's wife and child) that a great miracle was coming to visit the poor of Ballynockanor. The village is in sore need of a miracle. Struggling under grinding poverty and a greedy landlord, Ballynockanor is the story of a thousand Irish villages where an English usurper is despied by his Irish tenants.