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Brendan. “Mr. De Valera did well to keep us out of it.”
    â€œThey all wanted to invade us! The English! The Germans! Jasus, we’d have had no chance, lads!” murmured old Donie Donovan, lighting the plug of tobacco in his pipe. “Begging your pardon, Father, no chance!”
    The men stood around considering as the smell of tobacco mixed with iodine and seaweed drifted through the October air. Already the dark blue sea churned over and over, waves battering angrily against the small stone pier below where the fishermen tried to land the day’s catch and tie up their boats safely.
    Father Brendan sighed to himself. Another winter stuck in this godforsaken outpost of the west of Ireland. He had never imagined when he was studying for the priesthood in Maynooth College, more than thirty years ago, that this was where he’d end up, ministering to the people of Connemara. At least he had his own parish and house and Josie to look after him. But two of his old classmates were now bishops, and he’d heard that another was in the Vatican, studying ecclesiastical law and its complexities. His own career had gone in a different direction.
His elderly mother had begged the bishop at his ordination not to send him away on the missions. By Jove, she’d got her wish. It could be worse, he supposed, he could be out on the missions, trying to preach the Gospel to illiterate natives, tortured and threatened for his Christian beliefs, instead of safe here in the west of Ireland with good people who respected the Church and all it stood for.
    â€œWe must all pray for the end of the war and a good harvest of the sea,” added the priest, “as well as on the land.”
    The Doyle family and their neighbours nodded “Amen,” all the community in agreement.
    Esther had no interest in listening to their old war chitchat. All she wanted was to get home to her mother and tell her what a good baby Nora had been. She would just have time to put on the kettle and lay out a few sandwiches and the big fat sponge cake her Aunt Patsy had brought before the neighbours dropped in. Today was Nora’s day, and nothing was going to spoil it.

Chapter Four
    I n summer, Connemara was the most beautiful and wild place on God’s earth, the sea and sky melting together in a wave of shimmering blue, the ground covered in wildflowers and every shade of purple heather, water rippling through the bogs and the ocean’s creamy soft waves rushing to the shore. There was no place like it! But come winter, everything had changed. Esther hated the Connemara winters, when the warm deep blue of the ocean became a dark raging enemy, battering the entire west-of-Ireland coastline, flooding the fields and ditches, tossing the small boats against the stone pier and trying to wreck them. The wind was so strong it would knock the breath from your body! In winter it became cruel and magnificent.

    War raged through Europe. Stories filtering through told of horrendous loss of life as the Allies and the Germans fought to control mile after mile, the British and American troops pushing the Germans further and further back, and the Russians poised to attack them from the east. At least living in the wilds of the west of Ireland meant that they were far removed from it, almost untouched by the madness of man’s destruction.
    The winter itself was probably one of the worst that any of the people of Carraig Beag could remember. They were all well used to braving the elements, but nothing could have prepared them for the gales blowing in off the wild Atlantic Ocean, and the torrential rainstorms that clattered against the farmhouses and cottages that clung to the shore. The constant damp and wet seemed to soak in under every door and eaves, so that it clung to their clothing and bedding. The fields were sodden and muddy, flooded, the animals miserable too.
    Every morning Esther escorted her two younger brothers the