The Angel of Innisfree

Description

It's 1848, a time when the Irish Potato Famine has claimed more lives than anyone cares to count, while English landlords continue to evict their tenants with a ruthless lack of compassion. Young Brian O'Rourke, an educated and savvy son in an impoverished family of Ribbonmen, meets Elizabeth Reilly, a talented pianist from London, when she is visiting her wealthy father in Ireland. After promising themselves to each other at the age of sixteen, their destinies diverge when Elizabeth returns to London and then follows Chopin to Paris to study piano, while Brian immigrates to America on a famine ship. Brian's expertise in the nascent telegraph industry enables him to help slaves escape on the Underground Railroad. He then travels to California to work on the Transcontinental Telegraph and to Washington to help President Lincoln during the Civil War, while Elizabeth launches a successful career as a concert pianist in Europe and America. This epic historical drama weaves a story of love overcoming every obstacle during one of the most tumultuous periods in history, when revolutions in Europe and the Civil War in the United States shook the basic foundations of society, while inventions such as the telegraph changed the way the world worked. Their enduring romance captures the passionate spirits of two people determined to find each other regardless of the forces conspiring to keep them apart.