Published nearly a decade before Colum McCann's 2009 National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin, this collection finds the Irish author already in excellent form. In the novella, Hunger Strike, a convict starves in a Derry jail, even as his nephew flees to Galway. "Wood" is the tale of a ten-year-old boy who must make poles for the marching season, while in the title story, four soldiers help a farmer and his daughter free their horse from a stream in flood, yet unwittingly insult them.