Bartoletti's writing style makes the complex information she presents to readers accessible without being didactic or sensational. She traveled to Ireland and studied the Irish language to research this book.

Although not academically educated as a historian, Bartoletti has a credible methodology to address the potato famine. She consulted significant archival sources, public records, and primary and secondary sources about this topic. Bartoletti combines fact with folklore to show readers the many dimensions of the people and events she features.

In her annotated bibliography, Bartoletti assesses the resources she found available and advises future researchers about the merits of each source, noting which memoir keepers are reliable or not. She comments that, because of illiteracy and poverty, much of Irish famine history relies on oral traditions recorded by representatives of the Irish Folklore Commission who interviewed descendants. She read a variety of secondary materials, ranging from...