"This book is my attempt to get to know my Uncle Dennie, born in the Mealagh Valley, Bantry in 1901, died in Dublin 1967.

The child raised by his grandparents. The older brother who was a sort of uncle to his 16 younger siblings. The young revolutionary who killed a man. The exile in London. The kind and sensitive son who wrote lovely letters to his mother. The man who fell in love with a woman when he was nearly sixty, and died before he could marry her. He was all of these things, and probably much more that I will never know about.

This story is also an account of his family, and of the various sources and records, oral and written, which helped to reveal his life."