Ireland, 1651. A country ravaged by Oliver Cromwell's Act of Settlement. Under it, Fergal O'Breslin, a young clan chief, and his fellow Irish citizens are forced to leave their ancestral lands and travel to the cramped, rocky province of Connacht. There, honest men become robbers, proud men must beg, and despair and privation become a way of life.

Set against a panoramic backdrop of religious and political upheaval, Fergal and his clansmen struggle to wrest an existence out of a barren and inhospitable land under the yoke of English oppression.