At the time of his death in 1966, Frank O'Connor was generally regarded as an authority on the short story and one of the century's foremost practitioners of the genre. O'Connor's subjects are indeed many and varied; but a student of his entire canon cannot fail to be impressed with the extent to which he concerned himself with the Irish Revolution of 1916–1923. What is perhaps most surprising is that his interest in the conflict was not confined to his first book (which deals almost exclusively with it)—it was lifelong.

The Revolution consisted of first a war of independence with the British, and then a bloody Civil War between the diehard Republicans and those less adamant Irishmen who were willing to accept British Dominion Status as the Irish Free State. It was the formative milieu of a new generation of writers, of whom the most distinguished were Sean O'Faolain...