In the 1930s Kate O'Brien was widely recognized as the only outstanding Irishwoman writing after the Irish Renaissance. Leaving the country's political tension and social upheaval to the likes of Sean O'Casey, she found that life's real drama takes place in the human heart and focused in her novels on the emotional struggles which are as much a part of middle-class family life as they are of the seemingly more tragic aristocracy and impoverished working class. Irish-Catholic readers were captivated, for O'Brien shared their landscape, temperament, values, and fears. The realism with which she exposed the human condition often seemed daring enough to warrant censorship. Because she offered no simple solutions and possessed cynical good humor, she avoided reducing her fiction to melodramatic cliche. While modern readers may find the plots, the battles with society, outdated, tepid affairs, they will forever recognize the timelessness and universality of the...