In 1919 Emily Ehrlich watches as two young airmen Alcock & Brown emerge from the carnage of World War One to pilot the very first non-stop transatlantic flight from Newfoundland to the west of Ireland In 1845 Frederick Douglass a black American slave lands in Ireland to champion ideas of democracy & freedom only to find a famine unfurling at his feet & in 1998 Senator George Mitchell criss-crosses the ocean in search of an elusive Irish peace Stitching these stories intricately together Colum Mc Cann sets out to explore the fine line between what is real & what is imagined & the tangled skein of connections that make up our lives