The scene is Ireland. The time, 1916, is the eve of the famous, tragic Easter Rebellion in Dublin, which startled Europe even in the midst of the First World War. A single Anglo Irish family provides the extremely diverse characters. Pat Dumay is a Catholic and an Irish patriot. His relentlessly pious mother pursues her own private war with his step father, a man sunk in religious speculation and drink. Pat`s English bred Protestant cousin and rival, Andrew Chase White, an officer in King Edward`s Horse, puzzles out his complex emotions about Ireland and Frances, the girl he loves, against a background of the fear of death, while France`s father, Christopher Bellman, scholar and cynic, finds the love of Ireland a more passionate matter than he had bargained for. Weaving these people together into a tragic comic pattern moves Millie Kinnard: fast, feminist, and only just respectable.