The book tells the story of the intertwining lives of the Larkins, Catholic hill farmers from the fictional town of Ballyutogue in County Donegal, the Macleods, Protestant shipyard workers from Belfast, and the Hubbles, representatives of three centuries of Anglo-Irish aristocracy.
It also tells the story of Ireland from the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s to the Easter Rising of 1916. The book describes a number of true events, including the Gaelic Revival of Irish culture in the early twentieth century, and the Curragh Mutiny, in which a British division's officer corps resigned en masse rather than obey an order to disarm gun-smuggling members of the Ulster Volunteer Force. In addition, it foreshadows the partition of Ireland following the Irish Civil War in 1922-23.