Mick Barrett and Ned Morriarty run for their lives after one of them shoots and kills a British officer in Dublin prior to the 1916 Easter-week revolt. Ned is captured, but Mick escapes. At a wake, Mick's daughter meets an American spying for the British, carrying out orders to find the man who eludes capture. from the introduction of the two, Kathleen Barrett and William Hamilton, follows a courtship that ends with the imprisonment of her father. To avoid the shame of childbirth without marriage, Kathleen leaves Ireland for Boston, where twins are born. Contrasting characteristics shown in early years lead them to far different lives. One becomes a priest, and the other a lawyer. Both are drawn into New York's business and union corruption. Austin Dwyer's novel takes the reader to dinners in Boston and Dublin where men talk about politics and war, and to restaurants and bars in America where criminals conspire to move to the top by rubbing out the men in their way.