The Tenants of Time

The latter half of the nineteenth century; Ireland, England, America--the sweep of The Tenants of Time is epic, yet the effect, page by page, is to create a telling intimacy.

One believes in these tenants of time. The powerful and the humble, the rich and the dispossessed--they have an unforgettable life here, in and beyond fiction.

The action evolves in a complex web that takes us into the vast estates of the aristocracy, peasant cottages, sleepy market towns, Dublin, London, the immigrants' New York and Chicago. But the web begins in Kilpeder, the seat of the Earls of Ardmor, where three friends--Hugh MacMahon, Robert Delaney, and Edward Nolan--are among the sixty young men who take part in the Rising an advance on the headquarters of the Royal Constabulary and a retreat to Clonbrony Wood and surrender.

But the experience of that single day, from dawn to nightfall, seals a bond between the three friends that determines the course of their lives.