Nuala's father, losing his own mother and father at an early age, raised six younger siblings through a tumultuous boyhood of indentured labor for his uncle and service as a volunteer fighting for Ireland's independence before the country split into civil war. A small dairy farmer and community stalwart, he met his future wife when buying a calf from her father.

In marriage Nuala's mother, sharing her selflessness and seen as a saint, delivered life to a previously austere dwelling as she gave birth to 16 "blessings," ran the house, and raised the family. Living through the deaths of a son and a daughter and watching 13, all but one, leave home for elsewhere, Mom suffered her losses in hopes of her children's successes and with the promise to herself that God only delivered crosses to those who could carry them.

The interwoven narratives of the Sheehan family through Nuala's story recount the joys and pains of the human experience in a way that resonates beyond the insularity of agrarian life in a rural Irish countryside.